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Recollections 

of 

The American War 



First edition, 250 copies 
Second edition, 750 copies 




WILLIAM DUNLOP, M.D. 
From original painting in the possession of Mrs. Thos. McQaw. 



Recollections 

of the 

War of 1812 



By 

DR. WM. DUNLOP 



1 1 



With a Biographical Sketch of the Author by 
A. H. U. Colquhoun, LL.D. 

Deputy Minister of Education, Ontario 



SECOND EDITION 



& \ 

fU. E. Vj 
ser.es g 
— NO 3 $} 




TORONTO : 

HISTORICAL PUBLISHING CO. 
1908. 



c 



Entered according to the Act of the Parliament of Canada, in 
the year nineteen hundred and eight, by the Historical Publishing 
Co., at the Department of Agriculture. 



/3 



1 



• • » 

• J 

• • f 



TORONTO t 

THE BRYANT PRESS, LIMITED 



Sketch of 



Dr, William Dunlop 



w 



vt» 



This reprint of an entertaining little nar- 
rative of personal experiences in the War of 
1812-14 may be appropriately prefaced by a 
short account of the author. Few of the 
pioneers of Upper Canada had careers as 
varied and interesting as that of Dr. Wil- 
liam Dunlop, and none possessed a person- 
ality quite so striking and original as his. 
On the Saltfort road, near Goderich, Can- 
ada, there is a cairn marking the burial 
place of two notable worthies of the Huron 
Tract, and upon it is the following inscrip- 
tion: 



Vlll. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 

Here lies the body of 

ROBERT GRAHAM DUNL,OP, ESQ. 

Commander Royal Navy, M.P.P. 

Who after serving his King and country in 

every quarter of the globe, dies at Gair- 

braid, on the 28th Feby., 1841, in 

the 51 year of his age. 

Also to the memory of 

DR. WIIvLIAM DUNI.OP, 

a man of surpassing talent, knowledge, 

and benevolence, born in Scotland 

in 1792. 

He served in the army in Canada and in India 

and thereafter distinguished himself 

as an author and man of 

letters. 

He settled in .Canada permanently in 1825 and 
for more than 20 years was actively 
engaged in public and philan- 
thropic affairs. 

Succeeding his brother, Capt. Dunlop, as Mem- 
ber of the Provincial Parliament and 
taking successful interest in 
the welfare of Canada, 
and died lamented 
by many 
friends 
1848. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH IX. 

The elder of these two brothers, William 
Dunlop, was born at Greenock, Scotland, in 
1792, and became, when a stripling of scarce 
21 years of age, a surgeon in the famous 
88th,or,Connaught Rangers. Being ordered 
to Canada, where the war with the United 
States was in progress, he made his way to 
the fighting line in the Niagara Peninsula, 
and there, serving first as surgeon and after- 
wards as a combatant, he gave indubitable 
proofs of courage and capacity. When the 
"appalling intelligence" of the peace con- 
cluded by the Treaty of Ghent reached him, 
Dunlop embarked with his regiment for 
Kngland, just missing by a few days a share 
in the glorious action of Waterloo, and was 
ordered to India. While there his restless 
activity occupied itself with his medical and 
military duties, with the congenial task of 
editing a newspaper, and with numerous 
tiger hunts. So successful was he as a slay- 
er of tigers that he earned the name of 
"Tiger" Dunlop, and in his later Canadian 
days was familiarly known as "The Tiger.' 
An attack of jungle fever drove him back to 
England on half-pay, and settling in London 
he lived for a few years what has been call- 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 



ed a most miscellaneous life. He wrote ar- 
ticles for the magazines. He edited for a 
time a newspaper called the "British Press," 
until he quarrelled with the publisher for 
dismissing contemptuously a political up- 
heaval in France in the following brief 
"leader": l, 'We perceive that there is a 
change of ministry in France; — we have 
heard of no earthquakes in consequence!" 
He edited a work on medical jurisprudence. 
He started a Sunday newspaper for Anglo- 
Indians called "The Telescope," the history 
of which, declared one of his friends, was a 
comedy of the drollest kind. He founded a 
club, — being of convivial tastes and a prince 
of boon companions, — called The Pig 
and Whistle. Finally, — and this doubt- 
less led to his returning to Canada, — 
he became interested, as secretary, or, 
director, in some industrial concerns, 
notably a salt works in Cheshire. In 
London he made the acquaintance of Mr. 
John Gait, and accompanied him to Can- 
ada in 1826. He received from the Canada 
Company the appointment of Warden of the 
Forests, and for twenty years was a lead- 
ing figure in what we now call Western On- 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH XI. 



tario. If one wishes to know "The Tiger" in 
this period, he must be sought in the charm- 
ing pages of the Misses Lizars' book "In the 
Days of the Canada Company." There, his 
rollicking humour, his broad sympathies, 
his eccentric jests are excellently depicted. 
Dunlop represented Huron in Parliament, 
where he was a veritable "enfant terrible,' 
speaking his mind in his slap dash way and 
frequently convulsing the House with merri- 
ment. The story of his tossing the coin 
with his brother to settle which of them 
should marry I^ou McColl, the Highland 
housekeeper and devoted friend, and the 
terms of his extraordinary will and testa- 
ment,— one clause of which (typical of all) 
leaves some property to a sister "because 
she is married to a minister whom (God 
help him) she henpecks", — are famous. Dun- 
lop's literary talents were considerable. He 
wearied of writing as he did of most things 
that demanded continuous application. But 
he had an easy style, much shrewd wit, and 
undoubted ability. These qualities he dis- 
played in his magazine articles, in his book 
"The Backwoodsman," and in the "Recol- 
lections," which are here reprinted from 



xii. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 

"The Literary Garland," the Montreal peri- 
odical of half a century or more ago. They 
were penned long after the events concerned 
had occurred and it may be supposed that 
he fell into some errors of fact. But as a 
picture of the manner in which this hap- 
hazard war was conducted it is singularly 
vivid and impressive. The unearthing of 
manuscripts and official documents about 
this war will not throw into clearer relief 
than the following pages do, the desper- 
ate circumstances under which a mere 
handful of French Canadian and Loyalist 
colonists emerged from their primitive 
villages and log cabins and with Spartan 
courage and hardihood drove back the in- 
vader again and again and captured large 
areas of his territory. There are several 
readable sketches of these campaigns, but 
none with the freshness and spirit of Dun- 
lop's. In this lies its value and the justifica- 
tion for preserving it. Dunlop retired from 
Parliament in 1846, and was appointed Sup- 
erintendent of the Lachine Canal. He died 
in the village of Machine in the Autumn of 
1848, and his body was conveyed to its 
resting place at Goderich. 

A. H. XJ. Colquhoun. 



INTRODUCTION 

The favourable reception of a small work on 
this colony has emboldened me again to come be- 
fore the public in the character of an author, and 
as it is fifteen years since I last obtruded myself 
in that capacity, I have at least to boast of the 
merit assumed to himself by the sailor in his 
prayer, during a hurricane, "Thou knowest it is 
seldom that I trouble thee," and I may hope on 
the same grounds to be listened to. 

It is now upwards of thirty-three years since I 
became acquainted with this country, of which 
I was eleven years absent. During that time I 
visited the other quarters of the globe. My de- 
sign in this work is to shew the almost incredi- 
ble improvement that has taken place during 
that period. Notwithstanding all that has been 
written by tourists, &c, very little indeed is 
known of the value and capabilities of Canada, 
as a colony, by the people of Great Britain. 

I have not arrived at anything like methodical 
arrangement further than stating in their chro- 
nological order, events and scenes of which I was 
a witness, with occasional anecdotes of parties 
therein concerned, so that those who do not ap- 
prove of such a desultory mode of composition, 
need not, after this fore-warning, read any further. 



INTRODUCTION 

My intention, in fact, is not exclusively either to 
instruct or amuse, but, if I possibly can accom- 
plish it, to do a little of both. I wish to give an 
account of the effect of the changes that have 
taken place in my day in the colony, on my own 
feelings, rather than to enter into any philoso- 
phical enquiry into their causes ; and if in this 
attempt I should sometimes degenerate into 
what my late lamented friend, the Ettrick Shep- 
herd, would have denominated havers, I hope you 
will remember that this is an infirmity to which 
even Homer (see Horace,) is liable ; and if, like 
hereditary disease, it is a proof of paternity, 
every author in verse or prose who has written 
since his day, has ample grounds whereon to 
found its pretensions to a most ancient and hon- 
ourable descent. 




RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 
AMERICAN WAR 

CHAPTER I. 

" My native laud, good night."— Byron. 

The end of March or the beginning of April, 
1813, found me at the Army Depot in the Isle of 
Wight. Sir Walter Scott in his Surgeon's Daugh- 
ter, says that no one who has ever visited that 
delightful spot can ever forget it, and I fully 
agree with him, but though perfectly susceptible 
of the impressions which its numberless beauties 
leave on the mind, I must confess that the view 
of a fleet of transports rounding St. Helens to 
take us to our destination, would have been con- 
sidered by myself and my comrades, as a pleas- 
anter prospect than all Hampshire could offer to 
our admiration. 

I shall not stay to describe the state of mili- 
tary society in those days at the Army Depot at 
Parkhurst barracks and the neighbouring town of 
Newport. It has been much better done than I 
could expect to do, by Major Spencer Muggridge, 
in Blackwood's Magazine ; all I can do as a sub- 
altern, is fully to endorse the field officer's state- 
ment, and to declare that it is a just, graphic and 
by no means over-charged description. 



4 RECOLLECTIONS OF 

I went once, and only once, to the Garrison 
Mess, in company with two or three officers of 
my acquaintance, and saw among other novelties 
of a mess table, one officer shy a leg of mutton 
at another's head, from one end of the table to 
the other. This we took as notice to quit ; so we 
made our retreat in good order, and never again 
returned, or associated with a set of gentlemen 
who had such a vivacious mode of expressing a 
difference of opinion. 

The fact is, all the worse characters in the 
army were congregated at the Isle of Wight ; 
men who were afraid to join their regiments 
from the indifferent estimation they were held in 
by their brother officers. These stuck to the 
depot, and the arrival of a fleet of transports at 
Spithead or the Mother-bank, was a signal for a 
general sickness among these worthies. And 
this was peculiarly the case with those who were 
bound for Canada, for they knew full well if they 
could shirk past the month of August, there was 
no chance of a call on their services until the 
month of April following. And many scamps 
took advantage of this. I know one fellow who 
managed to avoid joining his regiment abroad for 
no less than three years. 

I took my departure from this military para- 
dise for the first time, for this country, in the 
beginning of August, 1813, in a small, ill-foundi, 
undermanned, over-crowded transport, as trans- 
ports in those days were very apt to be ; and 
after a long, weary, and tempestuous voyage of 
three months, was landed at Quebec in the begin- 



THE AMERICAN WAR 5 

ning of the following November. Next to the 
tedium of a sea voyage, nothing on earth can be 
so tiresome as a description of it ; the very inci- 
dents which a Journal of such a pilgrimage com- 
memorates shew the dreadful state of vacuum 
and ennui which must have existed in the mind of 
the patient before such trifles could become of 
interest sufficient to be thought worthy of nota- 
tion. A sail in sight, — a bunch of sea-weed 
floating past the ship, — a log of wood covered 
with barnacles,— or, better still, one of the nu- 
merous tribe of Medusa, with its snake-like feelers 
and changeable colours — a gull, or a flock of 
Mother Carey's chickens, paddling in the wake, — 
are occurrences of sufficient importance to call 
upon deck all the passengers, even during dinner. 
Or if they are happy enough to fall in with a 
shoal of porpoises or dolphins, a flock of flying 
fish, or a whale blowing and spouting near the 
ship, such a wonder is quite sufficient to furnish 
conversation for the happy beholders for the rest 
of the voyage. For my own part, being familiar 
with, and also seasoned to, all the wonders of 
the deep, I make a vow whenever I go on board, 
that nothing inferior in rank and dignity to a 
sea-serpent shall ever induce me to mount the 
companion ladder. On the whole, though it can- 
not be considered as a very choice bit of reading, 
I look upon the log-book as by far the best ac- 
count of a voyage, for it accurately states all 
that is worthy of note in the fewest possible 
words. It is the very model of the terse didactic. 
Who can fail to admire the Caesar-like brevity in 



6 RECOLLECTIONS OF 

an American captain's log : "At noon, light 
breezes and cloudy weather, wind W.S.W., fell in 
with a phenomenon — caught a bucket full of it." 
Under all these circumstances, I think it is high- 
ly probable that my readers will readily pardon 
me for not giving my experience on this subject. 
I met with no seas "mountains high," as many 
who have gone down unto the sea in ships have 
done. Indeed, though I have encountered gales 
of wind in all the favorite playgrounds of Oeolus 
— the Bay of Biscay — off the Cape of Good Hope 
— in the Bay of Bengal — the coast of America, 
and the Gulph of St. Lawrence, yet I never saw 
a wave high enough to becalm the main-top sail. 
So that I must suppose that the original inven- 
tor of the phrase was a Cockney, who must have 
had Garlic hill or Snow hill, or some of the 
other mountainous regions of the metropolis in 
his mind's eye when he coined it. 

Arrived at Quebec, we reported ourselves, as in 
duty bound, to the General Commanding, and by 
his orders we left a subaltern to command the 
recruits (most of whom, by the way, were mere 
boys,) and to strengthen the Garrison of Quebec, 
and the venerable old colonel and myself made 
all haste to join our regiment up the country. As 
my worthy old commander was a character, 
some account of him may not be uninteresting. 

Donald McB was born in the celebrated win- 
ter of 1745-46, while his father, an Invernesshire 
gentleman, was out with Prince Charles Edward, 
who, on the unfortunate issue of that campaign 
for the Jacobite interest, was fain to flee to 



THE AMERICAN WAR 7 

France, where he joined his royal master, and 
where, by the Prince's influence, he received a 
commission in the Scotch Regiment of Guards, 
and in due time retired with a small pension 
from the French King, to the town of Dunkirk, 
where with his family, he remained the rest of 
his days. 

Donald, meanwhile, was left with his kindred in 
the Highlands, where he grew in all the stinted 
quantity of grace that is to be found in that bar- 
ren region, until his seventh year, when he was 
sent to join his family in Dunkirk. Here he was 
educated, and as his father's military experience 
had given him no great love for the profession of 
arms, he was in due time bound apprentice to his 
brother-in-law, an eminent surgeon of that town, 
and might have become a curer instead of inflic- 
ter of broken heads, or at least murdered men 
more scientifically than with the broadsword ; 
but fate ordered it otherwise. 

Donald had an objection as strong to the lancet 
as his father could possibly have to the sword. 
Had the matter been coolly canvassed, it is hard 
to say which mode of murder would have obtain-* 
ed the preference, but, always hasty, he did not 
go philosophically to work, and an accident de- 
cided his fate as it has done that of many great- 
er men. 

A young nun of great beauty, who had lately 
taken the veil, had the misfortune to break her 
leg, and Donald's master, being medical man to 
the convent, he very reasonably hoped that he 
would assist in the setting of it— attending upon 



8 RECOLLECTIONS OF 

handsome young nuns might reconcile a man even 

to being a surgeon of ; but his brother-in-law 

and the abbess both entered their veto. Piqued 
at this disappointment, next morning saw him 
on the tramp, and the next intelligence that was 
heard of him was that he was serving His Most 
Christian Majesty in the capacity of a Gentleman 
Sentinel, (as the Baron of Bradwardine hath it,) 
in a marching regiment. 

This settled the point. His father, seeing that 
his aversion to the healing art was insuperable, 
procured a commission in the Regiment de Dillon 
or Irish Brigade of the French Service. 

In this he served for several years, until he had 
got pretty well up among the lieutenants, and in 
due time might have figured among the marshals 
of Napoleon ; but the American Revolution break- 
ing out, and it being pretty apparent that France 
and Great Britain must come into hostile col- 
lision, his father, though utterly abhorring the 
reigning dynasty, could not bear the idea of a 
son of his fighting against his country and clan, 
persuaded him to resign his commission in the 
French Service, and sent him to Scotland with 
letters of recommendation to some of his kin- 
dred and friends, officers in the newly raised 
Frazer Highlanders (since the 71st,) whom he 
joined in Greenock in the year 1776, and soon 
after embarked with them for America in the 
capacity of a gentleman volunteer, thus beginning 
the world once more at the age of thirty. 

After serving in this regiment till he obtained 
his ensigncy, he was promoted to be lieutenant 






THE AMERICAN WAR 9 

and adjutant in the Cavalry < of Tarlton's Legion, 
in which he served and was several times wound- 
ed, till the end of the war, when he was disband- 
ed with, the rest of his regiment, and placed on 
half pay. He exchanged into a regiment about 
to embark for the West Indies, where in seven or 
eight years, the yellow fever standing his friend 
by cutting off many of his brother officers, while 
it passed over him, he in progress of seniority, 
tontined it up to nearly the head of the lieuten- 
ants ; the regiment was ordered home in 1790, 
and after a short time, instead of his company, 
he received his half-pay as a disbanded lieutenant. 

He now, from motives of economy as well as 
to be near his surviving relatives, retired to Dun- 
kirk ; but the approaching revolution soon call- 
ed him out again, and his promotion, which, 
though like that of Dugald Dalgetty, it was 
"dooms slow at first," did come at last. Now 
after thirty-seven years' hard service in the Brit- 
ish Army, (to say nothing of fourteen in the 
French) in North America, the West Indies, 
South America, the Cape of Good Hope, Java 
and India, he found himself a Lieutenant-Colonel 
of a second battalion serving in Canada. Such is 
a brief memoir of my old commanding officer. 
He was a warm-hearted, hot-tempered, jovial, 
gentlemanly old veteran, who enjoyed the pres- 
ent and never repined at the past ; so it may 
well be imagined that I was in high good luck 
with such a compagnon de voyage. 

Hearing that the American Army under Gen- 
eral Wilkinson, was about to make descent on 



IO RECOLLECTIONS OF 

Canada somewhere about the lower end of Lake 
Ontario, we were determined to push on with all 
possible speed. 

The roads, 4 however, were declared impracti- 
cable, and the only steamboat the Canadas then 
rejoiced in, though now they must possess nearly 
one hundred, had sailed that day, and was not 
expected to return for nearly a week ; so it was 
determined we should try our luck in one of the 
wretched river craft which in those days enjoyed 
the carrying trade between Quebec and Montreal. 
Into the small cabin, therefore of one of these 
schooners we stowed ourselves. Though the 
winds were light, we managed to make some way 
as long as we could take advantage of the flood- 
tide, and lay by during the ebb ; but after this 
our progress was slow indeed ; not entirely from 
the want of a fair wind, but from the cursed dila- 
tory habits of Frenchmen and their Canadian 
descendants in all matters connected with busi- 
ness. At every village (and in Lower Canada 
there is a village at every three leagues along the 
banks of the St. Lawrence) our captain had or 
made business — a cask of wine had to be deliver- 
ed to " le digne Cure" at one place; a box of 
goods to " M. le Gentilhomme de Magasin" at 
another; the captain's "parents" lived within a 
league, and he had not seen them for six weeks, 
— so off he must go, and no prospect of seeing 
him any more for that day. The cottage of the 
cabin boy's mother unluckily lay on the bank of 
the river, and we must lay to till madame came 
off with confitures, cabbages and clean shirts for 



THE AMERICAN WAR II 

his regalement ; then the embracing, and kissing, 
and bowing, and taking off red night caps to 
each other, and the telling the news and hearing 
it, occupied ten times the space that the real 
business (if any there was) could possibly require. 
And all this was gone through on their part, as 
if it was the natural and necessary consequence 
of a voyage up the River Saint Lawrence. Haste 
seemed to them quite out of the question ; and it 
is next to impossible to get into a passion and 
swear at a Frenchman, as you would at a sulky 
John Bull, or a saucy Yankee, under similar cir- 
cumstances, for he is utterly unconscious all the 
time that he is doing anything unworthy ; he is 
so polite, complaisant and good humoured withal, 
that it is next to impossible to get yourself seri- 
ously angry with him. On the fifth day of this 
tedious voyage, when we had arrived within 
about fifteen miles of Three Rivers, which is mid- 
way between the two cities, we perceived the 
steamboat passing upwards close under the op- 
posite shore, and we resolved to land, knowing 
that it was her custom to stop there all night, 
and proceed in the morning ; accordingly we did 
so, and in a short time were seated in a caleche 
following at all the speed the roads would admit 
of— by dint of hard travelling, bribing and coax- 
ing, we managed to get to Three Rivers by 
moonlight, about one in the morning. So far so 
good, thought we ; but unluckily the moonlight 
that served us, served the steamboat also, and 
she had proceeded on her voyage before we came 
up. As we now, however, had got quite enough 



13 RECOLLECTIONS OF 

of sailing, we determined to proceed by land to 
Montreal. 

The French, I suspect, have always been before 
us in Colonial policy. An arbitrary government 
can do things which a free one may not have the 
nerve to attempt, particularly among a people 
whose ignorance permits them to see only one 
side of the question. 

The system of land travelling in Lower Canada 
was better, when we became master of it, than 
it is now in any part of the North American 
Continent. At every three leagues there was a 
" Maison de Poste " kept by a functionary who re- 
ceived his license from government, and denom- 
inated a " Maitre de Poste." He was bound by his 
engagement to find caleches and horses for all 
travellers, and he made engagements with his 
neighbors to furnish them when his were employ- 
ed. These were called "Aides de Poste"; and 
they received the pay when they performed the 
duty, deducting a small commission for the 
Maitre. They were bound to travel when the 
roads admitted of it, at a rate not less than 
seven miles an hour, and were not to exceed 
quarter of an hour in changing horses ; and to 
prevent imposition, in the parlour of each post 
house, (which was also an inn,) was stuck up a 
printed paper, giving the distance of each post 
from the next, and the sum to be charged for 
each horse and caleche employed, as well as other 
regulations, with regard to the establishment, 
which it was necessary for a traveller to know, 
and any well substantiated charge against these 



THE AMERICAN WAR 13 

people was sure to call down summary punish- 
ment. 

The roads not being, as already remarked, in 
the best order, we did not arrive at Montreal 
till the end of the second day, when we were 
congratulated by our more lucky companions 
who had left Quebec in the steamboat three days 
later, and arrived at Montreal two days before 
us ; and we were tantalized by a description of 
all the luxuries of that then little known convey- 
ance, as contrasted with the fatigues and desc- 
grements of our mode of progression. For the 
last fifty miles of our route there was not to be 
seen throughout the country a single man fit to 
carry arms occupied about his farm or workshop; 
women, children, or men disabled by age or de- 
crepitude were all that were to be met with. 

The news had arrived that the long threatened 
invasion had at last taken place, and every avail- 
able man was hurrying to meet it. We came up 
with several regiments of militia on their line of 
march. They had all a serviceable effective ap- 
pearance — had been pretty well drilled, and their 
arms being direct from the tower, were in per- 
fectly good order, nor had they the mobbish ap- 
pearance that such a levy in any other country 
would have had. Their capots and trowsers of 
home-spun stuff, and their blue tuques (night 
caps) were all of the same cut and color, which 
gave them an air of uniformity that added much 
to their military look, for I have always remark- 
ed that a body of men's appearance in battalion, 
depends much less on the fashion of their indi- 



14 RECOLLECTIONS OF 

vidual dress and appointments, than on the 
whole being in strict uniformity. 

They marched merrily along to the music of 
their voyageur songs, and as they perceived our 
uniform as we came up, they set up the Indian 
War-whoop, followed by a shout of Vive le Roi 
along the whole line. Such a body of men in 
such a temper, and with so perfect a use of their 
arms as all of them possessed, if posted on such 
ground as would preclude the possibility of regu- 
lar troops out-manoeuvering them, (and such posi- 
tions are not hard to find in Canada,) must have 
been rather a formidable body to have attacked. 
Finding that the enemy were between us and our 
regiment, proceeding to join would have been out 
of the question. The Colonel therefore requested 
that we might be attached to the militia on the 
advance. The Commander-in-Chief finding that 
the old gentleman had a perfect knowledge of the 
French language, (not by any means so common 
an accomplishment in the army in those days as 
it is now,) gave him command of a large brigade 
of militia, and, like other men who rise to great- 
ness, his friends and followers shared his good 
fortune, for a subaltern of our regiment who had 
come out in another ship and joined us at Mont- 
real, was appointed as his Brigade Major ; and I 
was exalted to the dignity of Principal Medical 
Officer to his command, and we proceeded to La- 
chine, the head-quarters of the advance, and 
where it had been determined to make the stand, 
in order to cover Montreal, the great commercial 



THE AMERICAN WAR IS 

emporium of the Canadas, and which, moreover, 
was the avowed object of the American attack. 

Our force here presented rather a motley ap- 
pearance ; besides a small number of the line 
consisting chiefly of detachments, there was a 
considerable body of sailors and marines ; the 
former made tolerable Artillery men, and the 
latter had, I would say, even a more serviceable 
appearance than an equal body of the line, aver- 
age it throughout the army. 

The fact is that during the war the marines 
had the best recruits that entered the army. The 
reason of this, as explained to me by an intel- 
ligent non-commissioned officer of that corps, 
was, that whereas a soldier of the line, returning 
on furlough to his native village, had barely 
enough of money to pay his travelling expenses, 
and support him while there, and even that with 
a strict attention to economy, the marine, on the 
other hand, on returning from a three years' 
cruise, had all the surplus pay and prize money 
of that period placed in his hands before he start- 
ed, and this, with his pay going on at the same 
rate as that of the soldier of the line, enabled 
him to expend in a much more gentlemanly style 
of profusion than the other. 

The vulgar of all ranks are apt to form their 
opinions of things rather from their results than 
the causes of them, and hence they jump to the 
conclusion that the marine service must be just 
so much better than that of the line, as the one 
has so much more money to spend on his return 
home than the other. And hence, aspiring— or as 



l6 RECOLLECTIONS OP 

our quarter master, Tom Sheridan, used to say 
when recruiting sergeant, perspiring — young he- 
roes, who resolve to gain a field marshal's baton 
by commencing with a musket, preferred the am- 
phibious path of the jolly to the exclusive^ terra- 
queous one of the flat-foot. Besides these and our 
friends the country militia, there were two corps 
formed of the gentlemen of Montreal, one of artil- 
lery and another of sharp-shooters. I think these 
were in a perfect state of drill, and in their hand- 
some new uniforms had a most imposing appear- 
ance. But if their discipline was commendable, 
their commissariat was beyond all praise. I v ong 
lines of carts were to be seen bearing in casks 
and hampers of the choicest wines, to say noth- 
ing of the venison, turkeys, hams, and all other 
esculents necessary to recruit their strength under 
the fatigues of war. With them the Indian found 
a profitable market for his game, and the fisher- 
man for his fish. There can be little doubt that 
a gourmand would greatly prefer the comfort of 
dining with a mess of privates of these distin- 
guished corps to the honour and glory of being 
half starved (of which he ran no small risk) at 
the table of the Governor General himself. Such 
a force opposed to an equal number of regulars, 
it may be said, was no very hopeful prospect for 
defending a country. But there are many things 
which, when taken into consideration, wffl show 
that the balance was not so very much against 
them as at first sight may appear. Men who are 
fighting for their homes and friends, and almost 
in sight of their wives and children, have an ad^ 



THE AMERICAN WAR 17 

ditional incentive over those who fight for pay 
and glory. Again, the enemy to attack them 
had to land from a rapid, a thing which precludes 
regularity under any circumstances, and they 
would not be rendered more cool by a heavy fire 
of artillery while they were yawning and whirl- 
ing in the current. They must have landed in 
confusion, and would be attacked before they 
could form, and should they get over all this, there 
was a plateau of land in the rear ascended by a 
high steep bank, which, in tolerable hands, could 
neither be carried nor turned. Add to all this, 
that the American regulars, if equal, were not 
superior to our troops in drill and discipline, the 
great majority of them having been enlisted for 
a period too short to form a soldier, under the 
most favorable circumstances. And much even 
of that short time had been consumed in 
long and harassing marches through an unsettled 
country that could not supply the commissariat, 
and exposed to fatigue and privation that was 
rapidly spreading disease among them ; dispirited 
too by recent defeat, with a constantly increas- 
ing force hanging on their rear. If they even had 
forced us at Lachine, they must have done it at 
an enormous loss. In their advance also towards 
Montreal, they must have fought every inch of 
the way, harrassed in front, flank and in rear, 
and their army so diminished that they could not 
hold Montreal if they had it. On the whole, 
therefore, — any reflections on the conduct of Gen- 
eral Wilkinson by those great military critics, the 
editors of American newspapers, to the contrary 



l8 RECOLLECTIONS OF 

notwithstanding, — every soldier will admit, that 
in withdrawing with a comparatively unbroken 
army to his intrenchment on Salmon River, the 
American commander did the very wisest thing 
that under all the circumstances he could have 
done. What the event of a battle might have 
been it is now impossible to say, for on this 
ground it was fated we were to show our devo- 
tion to our king and country at a cheaper rate, 
for the news of the battle of Chrysler's Farm, 
and the subsequent retreat of the Americans 
across the river, blighted all our hopes of laurels 
for this turn. 

This was a very brilliant little affair. Colonel 
Morrison of the 89th Regiment, was sent by 
General de Rotenburg, with a small corp amount- 
ing in all to 820 men, Regulars, Militia and In- 
dians, to watch the motions of the American 
army, when it broke up from Grenadier Island, 
near Kingston, and to hang on and harass their 
rear. This was done so effectually that General 
Covington was detached with a body at least 
three times our number to drive them back. 
Morrison retired till he came to a spot he had 
selected on his downward march, and there gave 
them battle. Luckily for us, the first volley we 
fired, killed General Covington, who must have 
been a brave fine fellow ; the officer succeeding 
him brought his undisciplined levies too near 
our well-drilled troops before he deployed, and 
in attempting to do so, got thrown into confu- 
sion, thus giving our artillery and gun-boats an 
opportunity of committing dreadful slaughter 



THE AMERICAN WAR 19 

among their confused and huddled masses. They 
rallied, however, again, but were driven off by 
the bayonet ; but all this cost us dear, for we 
were too much weakened to follow up our vic- 
tory. They retired therefore in comparative 
safety to about seven miles above the village of 
Cornwall, where they crossed the river without 
loss, save from a body of Highland militia, from 
Glengarry, who made a sudden attack on their 
cavalry while embarking, and by firing into the 
boats by which they were swimming over their 
horses, made them let go their bridles, and the 
animals swimming to the shore, were seized upon 
by Donald, who thus came into action a foot 
soldier, and went out of it a dragoon, no doubt, 
like his countryman, sorely " taight wi' ta peast 1 
on his journey home.* The enemy then took up 
a position and fortified a camp, where they re- 
mained during the winter, and when preparations 
were made to drive them out of it in the spring, 
they suddenly abandoned their position, leaving 
behind them their stores and baggage, and re- 
treated, followed by our forces, as far as the vil- 
lage of Malone, in the State of New York. Thus 
ended the "partumeius mons" of the only effi- 
cient invasion of Canada during the war. The 
fact is, the Americans were deceived in all their 
schemes of conquest in Canada ; the disaffected 
then as now were the loudest in their clamour, 
and a belief obtained among the Americans that 
they had only to display their colours to have the 
whole population flock to them. But the reverse 
of this was the case. They found themselves in 



20 RECOLLECTIONS OF 

a country so decidedly hostile, that their re- 
treating ranks were thinned by the peasantry fir- 
ing on them from behind fences and stumps; and 
it was evident that every man they met was an 
enemy. The militia at Lachine, after being duly 
thanked for their services, were sent home, and 
the regulars went into winter quarters ; the sail- 
ors and marines to Kingston — and we, having 
enjoyed our newly acquired dignities for a few 
days, set off to join our regiment then quartered 
at Fort Wellington, a clumsy, ill-constructed un- 
flanked redoubt, close to which now stands the 
large and populous village of Prescott, then con- 
sisting of five houses, three of which were unfin- 
ished. The journey was a most wretched one. 
The month of November being far advanced, rain 
and sleet poured down in torrents — the roads at 
no season good, were now barely fordable, so 
that we found it the easiest way to let our 
waggon go on with our baggage, and walk 
through the fields, and that too, though at every 
two hundred yards, or oftener, we had to scram- 
ble over a rail fence, six feet high ; sometimes we 
got a lift in a boat, sometimes we were dragged 
by main force in a waggon through the deep 
mud, in which it was hard to say whether the 
peril of upsetting or drowning was the most im- 
minent. Sometimes we marched ; but all that 
could be said of any mode of travel was, that it 
was but a variety of the disagreeable ; so, as 
there was no glory to be gained in such a service, 
I was anything but sorry when I learned that I 
was to halt for some time at a snug, comfort- 



THE AMERICAN WAR 21 

able, warm, cleanly, Dutch farm house, to take 
charge of the wounded who had suffered in the 
action of Chrysler's Farm. 

Washington Irving is the only describer of your 
"American Teutonic Race," and this, my debut 
in the New World, put me down in the midst of 
that worthy people as unsophisticated as possi- 
ble. It is refreshing, as his little Lordship of 
Craigcrook used to say, in this land where every 
man is a philosopher, and talks of government 
as if he had been bred at the feet of Machiavel, 
to meet with a specimen of genuine simplicity, 
perfectly aware of his own ignorance in matters 
which in no way concern him. Your Dutchman 
is the most unchangeable of all human beings, 
" Caelum non animum mutant, qui trans mare 
currunt" applies with peculiar force to the Ba- 
tavian in every clime on the face of the globe. 
In America, at the Cape of Good Hope, in the 
congenial marshes of Java, in the West Indies, 
and at Chinsurhae on the banks of the Ganges, 
the transmarine Hollander is always the same 
as in his own native mud of the dams and dykes 
of Holland,— the same in his house, his dress, his 
voracious and omniverous appetite, his thrift and 
his cleanliness. 

Among these good, kind, simple people, I spent 
a month or six weeks very pleasantly. Loyal 
and warmly attached to the British Crown, they 
followed our standard in the Revolutionary War, 
and obtained from government settlements in 
Canada when driven from their homes on the 
banks of the Hudson. From what I could learn 



22 RECOLLECTIONS OP 

from them, the Americans had persecuted them 
and their families with a rancour they displayed 
to no other race of mankind. When prisoners 
were taken in action, while the British were 
treated by them with respect, and even with 
kindness, the Dutch were deliberately murdered in 
cold blood. Men without arms in their hands, 
but suspected of favouring the British cause, were 
shot before their own doors, or hanged on the 
apple trees of their own orchards, in presence of 
their wives and families, who without regard to 
age or sex, were turned from their homes with- 
out remorse or pity. And one old dame told me 
that she was for six weeks in the woods between 
Utica and Niagara, unaccompanied by any one 
but her two infant children, looking for her hus- 
band, who she luckily found in the fort of the 
latter place ; at one time she and her poor babes 
must have perished from hunger, but for some 
Mohawk Indians, who came up and delivered 
them, and conducted them to the Fort. The 
Dutch themselves ascribe this very different 
treatment of the two races to the fear of the 
Americans that the British would retaliate in 
case they were ill used, wdiile the Dutch could 
not. 

This, however, could not have been the case, 
for had the Americans feared vengeance on the 
part of the British for the wrongs they inflicted 
on their countrymen, they must have equally 
feared that they would not quietly submit to 
injuries inflicted on men who were their loyal and 
faithful fellow subjects. I therefore suspect, that, 



THE AMERICAN WAR 23 

so far as their statements were correct, and they 
must have been so in the main, for I have the 
same stories from the Dutch of the Niagara Dis- 
trict who had no communication whatever with 
their compatriots of Williamsburg, and though 
we must allow great latitude for exaggeration in 
a people who were, no doubt, deeply injured, and 
had been brooding over their wrongs for a period 
of upwards of thirty years, during all which 
time their wrath had gathered force as it went, 
and their stories having no one to contradict 
them, must have increased with each subsequent 
narrator, till they had obtained all the credence 
of time-honoured truth— allowing for all this, but 
insisting that the stories had a strong founda- 
tion in fact, the rigor of their persecution must 
be attributed to another feeling, and must have, 
I should think, arisen from this, that the Amer- 
icans considered that a British subject born with- 
in the realm, and fighting for what he believed to 
be the rights of his country, was only doing 
what they themselves were doing ; whereas, a 
North American born, whatever his extraction, 
fighting against what they considered the rights 
of the people of North America, was a traitor 
and an apostate, an enemy to the cause of free- 
dom from innate depravity, and therefore, like a 
noxious animal, was lawfully to be destroyed, 
"per fas et nefas." However this may be, I 
found their hatred to the Americans was deep 
rooted and hearty, and their kindness to us and 
to our wounded, (for I never trusted them near 
the American wounded,) in proportion strong and 



24 RECOLLECTIONS OP 

unceasing ; my only difficulty with them was to 
prevent them cramming my patients with all 
manner of Dutch dainties, for their ideas of prac- 
tice being Batavian, they affirmed that there was 
infinitely greater danger from inanition then re- 
pletion, and that strength must come from nour- 
ishment. "Unless you give de wounded man 
plenty to eat and drink it is quite certain he 
can never get through." 

Killing with kindness is the commonest cause 
of death I am aware of, and it is very remiss in 
the faculty, that it has never yet found a place 
in the periodical mortuary reports which they 
publish in great cities in a tabular form — this 
ought to be amended. Au teste — I was very 
comfortable, for, while I remained under the hos- 
pitable roof of my friend old Cobus,I had an upper 
room for my sleeping apartment, and the show 
room of the establishment for my sitting parlor, 
an honour and preferment which nobody of less 
rank them an actual line officer of the " riglars 1 * 
could have presumed to aspire to ; to the rest of 
mankind it was shut and sealed, saving on high 
days and holidays. This sacred chamber was 
furnished and decorated in the purest and most 
classical style of Dutch taste, the whole wood- 
work, and that included floor, walls and ceiling, 
were sedulously washed once a week with hot 
water and soap, vigorously applied with a scrub- 
bing brush. The floor was nicely sanded, and 
the walls decorated with a tapestry of innumer- 
able home-spun petticoats, evidently never ap- 
plied to any other (I won't say meaner) purpose, 



THE AMERICAN WAR 25 

declaring at once the wealth and housewifery of 
the gude vrow. On the shelf that ran round the 
whole room, were exhibited the holiday crockery 
of the establishment, bright and shining, inter- 
spersed with pewter spoons, which were easily 
mistaken for silver from the excessive brightness 
of their polish. And to conclude the description 
of my comforts, I had for breakfast and dinner a 
variety and profusion of meat, fish, eggs, cakes 
and preserves, that might have satisfied the gre- 
nadier company of the Regiment. 

On the Saturday morning (for this was the 
grand cleansing day) I never went forth to visit 
my hospital without taking my fowling piece in 
my hand, and made a point of never returning 
until sunset, as during the intervening period no 
animal not amphibious could possibly have exist- 
ed in the domicile ; after leaving them I never 
passed their door on the line of march without 
passing an hour or two with my old friends, and 
on such occasions I used to be honoured with the 
chaste salute of the worthy old dame, which was 
followed by my going through the same cere- 
mony, to a strapping beauty, her niece, who was 
"comely to be seen," and in stature rather ex- 
ceeded myself, though I stand six feet in my 
stocking soles. An irreverent Irish subaltern of 
ours impiously likened the decorous and fraternal 
salute with which I greeted her, to the "slap of a 
wet brogue against a barn door;" and the angel 
who in her innocence bestowed that civility on 
me, was known by my brother officers, who had 



26 



RECOLLECTIONS OF 



no platonism in their souls, as "The Doctor's 
Sylph." 

From the end of the first few weeks that I re- 
mained here my patients gradually began to 
diminish,— some died, and these I buried— some 
recovered by the remedies employed, or spite of 
them, and these I forwarded or carried with me 
to join the Regiment,— and others who from loss 
of limbs or of the use of them, might be consid- 
ered as permanently rendered " hots de combat" 
1 sent by easy stages to Montreal General Hospi- 
tal, thence in the spring to be removed to Eng- 
land as occasion offered, thence to enjoy the hon- 
ours and emoluments of a Chelsea Pension. The 
few that remained unfit to be removed I commit- 
ted to the charge of an Hospital Mate, and pro- 
ceeded with all convenient speed to join the head- 
quarters of my Regiment. 




THE AMERICAN WAR 27 



CHAPTER II. 

" Cockneys of Iyondon, Muscadines of Paris, 
I pray you ponder, what a pastime war is." 

— Byron. 

I joined my regiment at Fort Wellington, and 
a fine jovial unsophisticated set of "wild tremen- 
dous Irishmen" I found my brother officers to be. 
To do them justice (and I was upwards of four 
years with them) a more honest-hearted set of 
fellows never met round a mess table. No private 
family ever lived in more concord or unanimity 
than did "Our Mess." 

Irishmen though they mostly were, they never 
quarrelled among themselves. They sometimes 
fought, to be sure, with strangers, but never in 
the Regiment, though we rarely went to bed 
without a respectable quorum of them getting a 
leetle to the lee side of sobriety. 

"Tempora mutantur," says Horace, but I very 
much doubt if "nos" (that is such as are alive of 
( nos') "mutamur in illis." The Army is very 
different from what it was in my day— sadly 
changed indeed! It will hardly be believed, but 
I have dined with officers who, after drinking a 
few glasses of wine, called for their coffee. If 
Waterloo was to fight over again, no rational 



28 RECOLLECTIONS OF 

man can suppose that we would gain it after 
such symptoms of degeneracy. Such lady-like 
gentlemen would certainly take out vinaigrettes 
and scream at a charge of the Old Guard, and be 
horrified at the sight of a set of grim-looking 
Frenchmen, all grin and gash, whisker and mous- 
tache. 

I was not, however, allowed to enjoy the fes- 
tivities of Fort Wellington, such as they were. 
The enemy being extended along the line of the 
right bank of the St. Lawrence, and the Lake of 
the Thousand Islands, it was necessary that we 
also should extend and occupy points that might 
enable us to keep up a communication, and main- 
tain a correspondence with our rear. Besides it 
was considered highly expedient and necessary, 
that small bodies of the line should be stationed 
in defensible positions, to form a nucleus, in case 
of invasion, for the Indians and Militia to rally 
round and form upon. Accordingly, a garrison 
had to be maintained in a block-house in the 
woods of Gananoque, between Brockville and 
Kingston, and our Grenadier Company being or- 
dered for that service, I was detached to accom- 
pany them. A block-house is a most convenient 
and easily constructed fort in a new country. 
The lower story is strongly built of stone, and 
the upper, which overhangs it about eighteen 
inches, (so that you can fire from above along 
the wall without being exposed,) is built of logs 
about a foot square. Both stories are pierced 
with loop-holes for musquetry, and in the upper 
are four portholes, to which are fitted four 24- 



THE AMERICAN WAR 29 

pounder carronades, mounted naval fashion, the 
whole being surrounded with a strong loop-holed 
and flanked stoccade, and this makes a very fair 
protection for an inferior force, against a supe- 
rior who are unprovided with a battering train, 
which of course in a few rounds would knock it 
to splinters. 

Kxcept in the expectation of a sudden attack, 
the officers were permitted to sleep out of the 
block-house, and a small unfinished house was 
taken for their residence. The captain and senior 
lieutenant being, as Bardolph hath it, better ac- 
commodated than with wives, we, that is the 
junior lieutenant and myself, gave up our share 
of the quarters to them, and established our- 
selves in what had been a blacksmith's shop, for 
our winter quarters. In the ante-room to this 
enviable abode, a jobbing tailor had formed his 
shop-board, and his rags and shapings proved 
highly useful in caulking its seams against the 
wind. By means of a roaring fire kept up on the 
forge, and a stove in the outer room, we man- 
aged to keep ourselves tolerably comfortable 
during an unusually rigorous winter ; and it be- 
ing on the road side, and a halting station in 
the woods, we were often visited by friends com- 
ing or going, who partook with great gout of onr 
frozen beef— which had to be cut into steaks with 
a hand-saw. Being on the banks of a fine stream, 
we never were at loss for ducks, and in the sur- 
rounding pine woods the partridges were abund- 
ant, and the Indians brought us venison in ex- 
change for rum, so that we had at least a plenti- 



30 RECOLLECTIONS OF 

ful, if not an elegant table, and we were enabled 
to pass the winter nights as pleasantly over our 
ration rum as ever I did in a place with much 
more splendid "appliances and means to boot." 

We passed the remainder of the winter as offi- 
cers are obliged to do in country quarters. We 
shot, we lounged, we walked and did all the flir- 
tation that the neighborhood of a mill, a shop, a 
tavern, with two farm houses within a reason- 
able forenoon's walk, could afford. We were de- 
prived, however, of the luxury of spitting over a 
bridge, which Dr. Johnston says is the principal 
amusement of officers in country quarters, for 
though we had a bridge close at hand, the stream 
beneath it was frozen. Early in spring we were 
relieved by two companies of another Regiment, 
and having received orders to join, we joined ac- 
cordingly. 

I had the good fortune to be quartered with 
two companies of my Regiment at the then in- 
significant village of Cornwall. It is now a flour- 
ishing town, and sends a Member to the Provin- 
cial Parliament, though it then did not contain 
more than twenty houses. Here we found our- 
selves in very agreeable society, composed prin- 
cipally of old officers of the revolutionary war, 
who had obtained grants of land in this neigh- 
bourhood, and ha.dsettled down, as we say in this 
part of the country and its neighbourhood, with 
their families. An affectation of style, and set 
entertainments that follow so rapidly the foot- 
steps of wealth, were then and there unknown, 
and we immediately became on the best possible 



THE AMERICAN WAR 3 I 

terms with the highest circles (for these exist in 
all societies, and the smaller the society, the 
more distinctly is the circle defined). We walked 
into their houses as if they had been our own, 
and no apology was offered, though these were 
found in such a litter as washing or scrubbing 
day necessarily implied. The old gentlemen when 
in town came to Our Mess, and when they had 
imbibed a sufficient quantity of port, they regaled 
us with toughish yarns of their military doings 
during the revolutionary war. And when a tea- 
drinking party called a sufficient number of the 
aristocracy together, an extemporaneous dance 
was got up, a muffled drum and fife furnishing 
the orchestra. 

Towards the end of June our two companies 
got the route to join headquarters, the Regiment 
being ordered to the Niagara frontier. But 
though the troops were relieved, I was not, but 
ordered to remain till some one should arrive to 
fill my place, and in the interval between that 
and my departure a Field Officer, who was sent 
to command the Militia of the district, arrived. 

He was an old acquaintance of mine, and a real 
good fellow. He had highly distinguished himself 
during the war, particularly at the storming of 
Ogdensburg, where he commanded. He was of 
Highland extraction, and though he had not the 
misfortune to be born in that country, he had, 
by means of the instructions of a Celtic moon- 
shee, (as they say in Bengal,) acquired enough of 
their language to hammer out a translation of a 
verse or two of the Gaelic Bible, with nearly as 



32 RECOLLECTIONS OF 

much facility as a boy in the first year of the 
Grammar School would an equal quantity of his 
Cordery. To all these good gifts he added the 
advantage of being of the Catholic persuasion, 
which rendered him the most proper person that 
could have been selected to take charge of a dis- 
trict the chief part of whose Militia were High- 
landers, Catholics, and soldiers, or the sons of 
soldiers. 

I have never met with him since the end of the 
war, though I might have seen him in Edinburgh 
at the King's visit ; but who could be expected 
to recognize a respectable Field Officer of Light 
Infantry, masquerading, disguised for the first 
time in his life in a kilt, and forming a joint in 
the tail of the chief of his barbarous clan ? 

It struck this gentleman that supplies of fresh 
provisions might be got from the American side, 
and accordingly he sent emissaries over the river, 
and the result justified the correctness of his 
views. 

While sitting after dinner one day tete-ci-tete 
with the Colonel, his servant announced that a 
gentleman wanted to see him. As the word gen- 
tleman on this side of the Atlantic conveys no 
idea of either high birth or high breeding}, nor 
even of a clean shirt, or a whole coat, my friend 
demanded what kind of a gentleman, — as, like a 
sensible man as he was, he did not wish to be 
interrupted in the pleasant occupation of dis- 
cussing his wine and listening to my agreeable 
conversation, by a gentleman who possibly might 
ask him if he wished to buy any eggs, as many 



THE AMERICAN WAR 33 

species of the genus gentleman on this side of the 
herring pond might possibly deem a good and 
sufficient reason for intruding on his privacy. 
His servant said he believed he must be a kind 
of Yankee gentleman, for he wore his hat in the 
parlor, and spit on the carpet. The causa scien- 
tiae, as the lawyers say, seemed conclusive to 
my Commandant, for he was ordered to be ad- 
mitted, and the Colonel, telling me that he sus- 
pected this must be one of his beef customers, re- 
quested I would not leave the room, as he wish- 
ed a witness to the bargain he was about to 
make. 

Accordingly, there entered a tall, good-looking, 
middle-aged man, dressed in a blue something, 
that might have been a cross between a surtout 
and a great coat. He was invited to sit down, 
and fill his glass, when the following dialogue 
took place : 

Yankee. — I'm Major of Vermont State, 

and I would like to speak to the Colonel in priv- 
ate, I guess, on particular business. 

Colonel. — Anything you may have to say to 
me, Sir, may be said with perfect safety in pres- 
ence of this gentleman. 

Major. — I'm a little in the smuggling line, I 
reckon. 

Colonel. — Aye, and pray what have you smug- 
gled ? 

Major. — Kettle, (cattle,) I reckon. I heerd that 
the Colonel wanted some very bad, so I just 
brought a hundred on 'em across at St. Regis, as 
fine critters, Colonel, as ever had hair on 'em. 



34 RECOLLECTIONS OF 

So I drove them right up; the Colonel can look 

at 'em hisself — they are right at the door here. 

Colonel. — Well, what price do you ask for 
them? 

Major. — Well, Colonel I expect about the same 
as other folks gets, I conclude. 

Colonel. — That is but reasonable, and you shall 
have it. 

The Commissary of the Post was sent for, and 
having been previously warned not to be very 
scrupulous in inspecting the drove, as it was of 
infinitely more importance to get the army sup- 
plied than to obtain them at the very lowest rate 
per head, he soon returned with a bag of half 
eagles, and paid the Major the sum demanded. 
The latter, after carefully counting the coin, re- 
turned it into the canvas bag, and opening his 
coat displayed inside the breast of it, a pocket 
about the size of a haversack, into which he 
dropped his treasure, and then deliberately but^ 
toning it up from the bottom to the throat, he 
filled and drank a glass of wine, to our good 
healths ; adding, "Well, Colonel, I must say you 
are a leetle the genteelest man to deal with ever 
I met with, and I'll tell all my friends how hand- 
some you behaved to me ; and I'm glad of it for 
their sakes as well as my own, for jist as I was 
fixing to start from St. Regis, my friend Colonel 

arrived with three hundred head more. 

The kettle arnt his'n ; they belong to his father, 
who is our Senator. They do say that it is 
wrong to supply an innimy. and I think so too ; 
but I don't call that man my innimy who buys 



THE AMERICAN WAR 35 

what I have to sell, and gives a genteel price for 
it. We have worse innimies than you Britishers. 
So I hope the Colonel will behave all the same 
as well to them as he has done to me; but there 
was no harm in having the first of the market, 
vou know, Colonel." So with a duck that was 
intended for a bow, and a knowing grin that 
that seemed to say, "It was just as safe to se- 
cure my money before giving you this piece of 
information," he took his leave and departed, evi- 
dently much pleased with the success of his ne- 
gotiation. 

At this time the expense of carrying on the 
war was enormous. Canada, so far from being 
able to supply an army and navy with the pro- 
visions required, was (as a great many of her 
effective population were employed in the trans- 
port of military and naval stores,) not fit to 
supply her own wants, and it was essential to 
secure supplies from wherever they could be got 
soonest and cheapest. Troops acting on the Ni- 
agara frontier. 1,000 miles from the ocean, were 
fed with flour the produce of England, and pork 
and beef from Cork, which, with the waste in- 
separable from a state of war, the expense and 
accidents to which a long voyage expose them, 
and the enormous cost of internal conveyance, at 
least doubled the quantity required, and render- 
ed the price of them at least ten times their or- 
iginal cost. Not only provisions, but every kind 
of Military and Naval Stores, every bolt of can- 
vas, every rope yarn, as well as the header ar- 
ticles of guns, shot, cables, anchors, and all the 



36 RECOLLECTIONS OF 

numerous etceteras for furnishing a large squad- 
ron, arming forts, supplying arms for the militia 
and the line, had to be brought from Montreal 
to Kingston, a distance of nearly 200 miles, by 
land in winter, and in summer by flat-bottomed 
boats, which had to tow up the rapids, and sail 
up the still parts of the river, (in many places 
not a mile in breadth, between the British and 
American shores,) exposed to the shot of the 
enemy without any protection ; for with the 
small body of troops we had in the country, it 
was utterly impossible that we could detach a 
force sufficient to protect the numerous brigades 
of boats that were daily proceeding up the river, 
and we must have been utterly undone, had not 
the ignorance and inertness of the enemy saved 
us. Had they stationed four field guns, covered 
by a corps of riflemen, on the banks of the St. 
Lawrence, they could have cut off our supplies 
without risking one man. As it was we had only 
to station a small party at every fifty miles, to 
be ready to act in case of alarm ; but fortunate- 
ly for us, they rarely or never troubled us. If 
they had done so with any kind of spirit, we 
must have abandoned Upper Canada, Kingston 
and the fleet on Ontario included, and leaving it 
to its fate, confined ourselves to the defence of 
such part of the Lower Province as came within 
the range of our own empire, the sea. 

I would do gross injustice to my reader, no 
less than to myself, were I to quit Cornwall 
without mentioning a most worthy personage, 
who, though in a humble station, was one of the 



THE AMERICAN WAR 37 

best and most original characters I ever met 
with in my progress through life. This was no 
other than my worthy hostess, of the principal 
log hotel, Peggy Bruce. If you could conceive 
Meg Dodds an Irish instead of a Scotch woman, 
you would have a lively conception of Peggy. 
She possessed all the virtues of her prototype, all 
her culinary talents, all her caprice with guests 
she did not take a fancy for, and all powers, of- 
fensive or defensive, by tongue or broom, as the 
case in hand rendered the one or the other more 
expedient. 

Peggy was the daughter of a respectable Irish 
farmer, and had made a runaway match with a 
handsome young Scotch sergeant. She had ac- 
companied her husband through the various cam- 
paigns of the revolutionary war, and at the 
peace, his regiment being disbanded, they set up 
a small public house, which, when I knew her as 
a widow, she still kept. The sign was a long 
board, decorated by a very formidable likeness of 
St. Andrew at the one end, and St. Patrick at 
the other, being the patron saints of the high 
contracting parties over whose domicile they 
presided, and the whole surrounded by a splendid 
wreath of thistles and shamrocks. 

Bred in the army, she still retained her old 
military predeliction, and a scarlet coat was the 
best recommendation to her good offices. Civi- 
lians of whatever rank she deemed an inferior 
class of the human race, and it would have been 
a hard task to have convinced her that the Lord 



38 RECOLLECTIONS OF 

Chancellor was equal in dignity or station to a 
Captain of Dragoons. 

It was my luck, (good or bad as the reader 
may be inclined to determine,) to be a prodigious 
favourite with the old lady; but even favour with 
the ladies has its drawbacks and inconveniences, 
and one of these with me was being dragged to 
the bedside of every man, woman and child who 
was taken ill in or about the village. At first I 
remonstrated against my being appointed physi- 
cian-extraordinary to the whole parish, with 
which I was in no way connected ; but Peggy 
found an argument which, as it seemed perfectly 
satisfactory to herself, had to content me. "What 

the d 1 does the king pay you for, if you are 

not to attend to his subjects when they require 
your assistance ?" 

I once, and only once, outwitted her. She woke 
me out of a sound sleep a little after midnight, 
to go and see one of her patients. Having un- 
dergone great fatigue the day before, I felt very 
unwilling to get up. At first I meditated a flat 
refusal, but I could see with half a glance, that 
she anticipated my objections, for I saw her eye 
fix itself on a large ewer of water in the basin 
stand, and I knew her too well for a moment to 
suppose that she would hesitate to call in the 
aid of the pure element to enforce her arguments. 
So I feigned compliance, but pleaded the impos- 
sibility of my getting up, while there was a lady 
in the room. This appeared only reasonable, so 
she lit my candle and withdrew to the kitchen 
fire, while I was at my toilet. Her back was no 



THE AMERICAN WAR 39 

sooner turned, than I rose, double-locked and 
bolted the door, and retired again to rest, leav- 
ing her to storm in the passage, and ultimately 
to knock up one of the village doctors, whose 
skill she was well persuaded was immeasurably 
inferior to any Army medical man who wore His 
Majesty's uniform. But though I chuckled at my 
success at the time, I had to be most wary how 
I approached her, and many days elapsed before 
I ventured to come within broom's length of her. 
At last I appeased her wrath by promising never 
"in like case to offend," and so obtained her for- 
giveness, and was once more taken into favour ; 
but Peggy was too old a soldier to be taken in 
twice, or to trust to the promise of a sleepy man 
that he would get up. After this, when she re- 
quired my services, she would listen to no apolo- 
gy on the score of modesty, but placing her lan- 
tern on the table, waited patiently till I was 
dressed, when tucking up her gown through her 
pocketholes and taking my arm, away we pad- 
dled through the mud in company. 

After reaching the house of the patient, and 
after the wife and daughters had been duly scold- 
ed for their neglect in not calling her in sooner, 
we entered into consultation, which like many 
other medical consultations, generally ended in a 
difference of opinion. To a military surgeon, 
much sooner than to any other surgeon, 
there were certain great leading principles m the 
healing art, to all impugning of which Peggy was 
flint and adamant and when these were mooted 
I much question if she would have succumbed to 



40 RECOLLECTIONS DF 

even the Director General of the Army Medical 
Board himself. 

At the head of her medical dicta was that it 
was essential to "support the strength." That 
was to cram the patient with every kind of food 
that by entreaty or importunity he could be pre- 
vailed upon to swallow, (a practice by the way 
of more learned practitioners than Peggy.) A 
hot bath with herbs infused in it was another 
favourite remedy, and on this we were more at 
one, for the bath would most likely do good, and 
the herbs no harm. Her concluding act at the 
breaking up of the consultation was generally to 
dive into the recesses of a pair of pockets of the 
size and shape of saddle bags, from which, among 
other miscellaneous contents, would she fish up a 
couple of bottles of wine which she deemed might 
be useful to the patient. After we had finished 
business I escorted the old lady home, where 
there was always something comfortable kept 
warm for supper, which when we had discussed 
together, with something of a stiffish horn of hot 
brandy and water, we departed to our respective 
dormitories. 

Peggy, like many of her country, possessed a 
keen vein of sarcastic humor, which often made 
her both feared and respected. A Colonel, as 
good a man, and as brave a soldier as ever drew 
a sword, but too much of a martinet to be a fa- 
vourite with the militia of whom he was Inspect- 
ing Field Officer, received a command in 'a divi- 
sion that was then going on actual service. Peg- 
gy, who respected his military talents at least 



THE AMERICAN WAR 41 

as much as she disliked his hauteur, meeting him 
the day before his departure, addressed him with 
— "Och ! Colonel dear, and are ye going to lave 
us — sure there will be many a dry eye in the 
town the day you quit it." When the American 
Army, under Wilkinson, were coming down the 
St. I,awrence, a company of Glengarry Militia 
were placed at Cornwall to watch their move- 
ments, ajnd act as might be most expedient. 
The Captain of the band was named John Mc- 
Donald, a very good and highly respectable name, 
but of no earthly use to distinguish a Glengarry 
man, as there were some hundreds in that part 
of the world — nor would the prefix of his mili- 
tary rank much mend the matter, as there are 
probably some score Captain John McDonalds. 
In this emergency therefore, a soubriquet be- 
comes indispensable. This Captain John had in 
his youth served in the revolutionary war as a 
corporal, in the same brigade as Peggy's hus- 
band, therefore they were very old friends, and to 
distinguish him from' the clan she named him 
Captain Corporal John. When it was known 
that the invading army had abandoned the at- 
tempt, and had crossed the river, the men, wisely 
considering that their services were no longer re- 
quired in Cornwall, and would be highly useful 
on their farms, disbanded themselves during the 
night without the formality of asking leave, so 
that at morning parade only six appeared on the 
ground. Such an unheard-of breach of military 
discipline could not fail to excite the fierce indig- 
nation of the worthy veteran ; accordingly he 



42 RECOLLECTIONS OP 

vented his wrath in every oath, Gaelic or Eng- 
lish, within the range of his vocabulary. Peggy, 
who witnessed the scene from her window, con- 
soled the incensed commander with "Och ! John, 
dear, don't let the devil get so great a hould of 
ye as to be blaspheming like a heathen in that 
fearful way ; things are not so bad with you yet» 
sure you have twice as many men under your 
command as you had when I knew you first." 

Having at last been relieved, I proceeded to 
join on the Niagara frontier, and therefore march- 
ed with a detachment of the Canadian Fencibles 
to Kingston, where I was joined by a friend of 
mine, an officer of the iooth, who was bound for 
the same destination. We accordingly waited on 
the Deputy Quarter Master General, and stated 
the necessity of being furnished with land convey- 
ance, as the battle which must decide the cam- 
paign, was hourly expected ; but that gentleman 
having newly acquired his dignity, it did not sit 
easy upon him, and with great hauteur he flatly 
refused us, and unless we chose to march it, 
(about 200 miles,) we had no shift but to embark 
in a batteau loaded with gunpowder, and rowed 
by a party of De Watteville's regiment. This 
gentleman, by the bye, afterwards distinguished 
himself as a naturalist in Sir John Ross' first 
Polar expedition, and as a most appropriate re- 
ward had the honor to stand god-father to a non- 
descript gull, which bears his name unto this, day. 

In the batteau, therefore, we deposited our- 
selves, and with six more in company proceeded 
on our way, with such speed as a set of rowers, 



THE AMERICAN WAR 43 

who probably had never had an oar before in 
their hands, could urge us. The wind though 
light was ahead ; but when we got about six 
hours distance from Kingston, which perhaps 
might amount to eighteen or twenty miles, all 
we could do was to make head-way against it, 
and as it looked as if there would be more of it, 
sooner than less, I (who, from my superior nau- 
tical experience, having been born and bred in a 
sea-port town and acquired considerable dexteri- 
ty both in stealing boats and managing them 
when stolen, was voted Commodore,) ordered 
them under the lee of a little rocky island, and 
carried their dangerous cargo about a hundred 
yards from where we encamped, that is to say, 
put the gunpowder at one end of the island and 
ourselves at the other, hauled up the batteau., 
lighted fires, and forming a camp of sails and 
tarpaulins, waited the event. A squall did come 
down the lake in very handsome style, embellish- 
ed with a sufficiency of spindrift to make us 
thankful that we were under the lee of a rock 
and covered overhead. The squall subsided into 
a good steady gale, accompanied by a sea that 
made it utterly impossible that we could have 
proceeded even if the wind had been as favourable 
as it was the contrary ; we thus had the advan- 
tage of enjoying two days of philosophical reflec- 
tion on a rock in Lake Ontario. On the third it 
began to moderate, and my comrade and I took 
one of the empty batteaus with a strong party, 
and made us directly in shore as we could, and 
had the good fortune to land about twelfve miles 



44 RECOLLECTIONS OF 

above Kingston, determined to make our way on 
horseback, coute qu'il coute. 

Any one who has only seen the roads of Can- 
ada in the present day, can form but a very in- 
adequate idea of what they were then between 
Kingston and Toronto ; for a considerable part 
of the way we were literally up to our saddle- 
flaps. In those days all the horses along the 
roads were taken up for Government, and an 
officer receiving the route gave the proprietor an 
order for so many horses so many miles, and the 
nearest Commissary paid it ; or he paid it, tak- 
ing a receipt which, when he showed it to the 
Commissary at the end of his journey, was re- 
funded. We necessarily took the latter mode, see- 
ing we had no route to show, and therefore paid 
our way ourselves. The officer who accompanied 
me being like myself a subaltern, we found 
we uniformly got the worst horses, as Major A. 
or Colonal B. or some other "person of worship" 
was expected, and the best must necessarily be 
kept for him. It struck me therefore that if 
" Captain" was a good travelling name, "Gener- 
al" must be a much better ; I proposed to my 
companion that he should have the rank of Major 
General "for the road only," and I volunteered 
to act as Aide-de-camp. He liked the plan, but 
objected that he was too young to look the char- 
acter, but that as I had a more commanding and 
dignified presence, I should do General and he 
Aide-de-camp, and as we were dressed in our sur- 
touts and forage caps, we were well aware that 
we might easily pass with the uninitiated for any 



THE AMERICAN WAR 



45 



rank we might think proper to assume. Accord- 
ingly, when we approached a halt where we were 
to change horses, he rode briskly forward and 
began to call lustily about him, as "one having 
authority," for horses, and pointing to a very 
active, stout looking pair, peremptorily ordered 
them to be brought out and saddled ; but the 
man of the house excused himself by saying that 
he "kept them horses for the sole use of Major B. 
the Deputy Quarter Master General, and as he 
had the conducting of the troops on the line of 
march through which the road lay, and had it in 
his power to put good jobs in his way, he was 
not a man whom he could offend on slight 
grounds." 

"D n Major B !" exclaimed the irreverent 

and indignant A.D.C. "Would you set his will, or 
that of fifty like him, against the positive orders 
of the great General D. who has been sent out 
by the Duke of Wellington to instruct Sir Gor- 
don Drummond how he is to conduct the cam- 
paign ? Sir, if by your neglect he is too late for 
the battle that must soon be fought, you will be 
answerable for it, and then hanging on your own 
sign-post is the very mildest punishment you can 
expect ; it is the way we always settled such 
matters in Spain." To this argument there could 
be no answer, so the horses were led out just as 
I came up— my A.D.C. with his hat in his hand 
holding my stirrup as I mounted. This to those 
who knew anything about the service would have 
appeared a little de trap ; but to the uninitiated, 
of whom mine host was one, it only served to in- 



46 RECOLLECTIONS OF 

spire him with the higher respect for the great 
man his horse was about to have the honour to 
carry. 

So far things went on as well as could have 
been wished ; but in turning a corner in a young 
pine wood about a mile from where we had start- 
ed, who should we meet full in the face but Major 
B., (commonly called Beau B.) who was also a 
captain in my own regiment. After the first sal- 
utation he expressed his surprise that the man 
should have given me his horses. I assured him 
that I should not have got them, but that he had 
a much better pair for him. This pacified him, 
so after a few minutes' conversation, (the A.D. 
C. and guide keeping a respectful distance,) I 
told him I had been made a general since I last 
saw him. He did not see the point of the joke 
at the time, but on taking leave he took off his 
hat and bowing till his well brushed and perfum- 
ed locks mixed with the hair of his horse's mane, 
said, loud enough for the guide to hear him, 
"General D., I have the honor to wish you a 
very good morning." If there had been any mis- 
givings in the mind of the guide, this could not 
fail to remove them. Immediately after he rode 
up to me, and said that if I had no objections he 
would ride forward, and make such arrangements 
that there should be no delay in mounting me at 
the next stage. To this I acceded with the most 
gracious affability, so he rode on accordingly. 
His zeal for the service might account for his 
eagerness, yet I hope I will not be accounted un- 
charitable when I suspected that the importance, 



THE AMERICAN WAR 47 

which attaches to the person who is first to com- 
municate an extraordinary piece of news, may 
have had something to do with all this alacrity. 
However this may be, it served my purpose, for 
at every stage not a moment was lost, the news 
flying like wild fire. I found horses ready at 
every house, and never was for one moment de- 
layed. 

With my friend Beau B. the result was some- 
what different, for on arriving at the stage there 
was nothing for him but our exhausted dog-tired 
horses to mount, which in the state of the roads 
would have been utter madness ; so he had to 
wait in a roadside inn, consoling himself with 
what philosophy he could muster till they were 
sufficiently recruited with food and rest to con- 
tinue their journey. 

On this journey there occurred a circumstance 
which, as it is intimately connected with the 
secret historv of the Province, deserves to be re- 
lated. It will be news to most of my neighbors 
that the Province of Canada has a secret history 
of its own, or they may suppose that it may con- 
tain some such tit-bits as the secret history of 
the Court of St. Petersburg in the days of Cath- 
arine ; but I am sorry to say that our secret his- 
tory affords nothing so piquante ; it only relates 
to the diplomacy of the Court of St. James, 
with its effects on the Court of the Chateau St. 
Ivouis. 

In those days Sir George Prevost filled the 
vice-regal chair of Her Majesty's dominions in 
British North America, and a more incompetent 



48 RECOLLECTIONS OF 

Viceroy could hardly have been selected for such 
trying times. Timid at all times, despairing of 
his resources, he was afraid to venture anything; 
and when he did venture, like an unskilful hunter, 
he spurred his horse spiritedly at the fence, and 
while the animal rose he suddenly checked him — 
baulked him in the leap he could have easily 
cleared, and landed himself in the ditch. Thus he 
acted at Sackett's Harbour and thus at Platts- 
burg, where he was in possession of the forts 
when he ordered the retreat to be sounded, and 
ran away out of one side of the town while the 
enemy were equally busy in evacuating it at the 
other. But to my story. Late on the evening of 
our first day's journey, and therefore somewhere 
midway between Kingston and Toronto, we over- 
took an officer of Sir George Prevost's Staff. He 
asked us why we were riding so fast ? We told 
him, to be present at the coming battle. He told 
us we might save ourselves the trouble, as there 
would be no battle till he was there, and hinted 
perhaps not then ; and strongly recommended 
that, instead of pushing on through such roads 
during the night, we should stop at a house he 
pointed out to us, and where he was going. 
Thinking, however, that a battle was not always 
at the option of one party, we determined to push 
on, while he turned up to a good looking two 
story white framed house on the lake side of the 
road. Many years after, the late Mr. Gait was 
employed to advocate the War Losses in Canada 
with His Majesty's Government. In one of his 
conferences with the Colonial Secretary, the lat- 



THE AMERICAN WAR 49 

ter stated that everything that could be done had 
been done for the defence of the Province, and 
that it never had been the intention either of the 
Imperial or Colonial Government to abandon it. 
Mr. Gait then placed in his hands a paper, pur- 
porting to be a copy of a despatch from Sir 
George Prevost to Sir Gordon Drummond, order- 
ing him to withdraw his forces from the upper 
part of the Province, and to concentrate them to 
cover Kingston. The Secretary then, turning to 
Gait, said rather sternly : 

"Sir, you could not have come fairly by this 
copy of a private despatch ?" 

Gait calmly replied, "My Lord, however this 
paper was come by at first, I came honestly 
enough by it, for it was sent to me with other 
papers to assist me in advocating the claims of 
those who have suffered in the war ; but I thank 
your Iyordship for admitting that it is a copy of 
a despatch whether private or public." 

His Ivordship felt that, in his haste to crimin- 
ate, he had allowed his diplomacy to be taken by 
surprise. 

Gait told me this story, and I then told him 
my meeting the officer, who undoubtedly was the 
bearer of the despatch ; he confessed to me that 
it was at that house and on that night that the 
despatches were abstracted from that Staff Offi- 
cer's sabre-tasche, copied, resealed and returned. 
Of course he never would tell me who were the 
perpetrators ; but if a certain Colonel of Militia 
(who was not then present, but attending his 
duty on the frontier) were now alive,— poor fel- 



50 RECOLLECTIONS OF 

low ! he came by an untimely end — I have no 
doubt but he could throw some light on the sub- 
ject. 

We continued to be furnished with good horses 
till we arrived at Toronto, (then York,) for 
there being then moonlight we rode twenty 
hours out of the twenty-four, and it appeared 
that we had advanced for the two last days (for 
the first day we only made one stage) at the rate 
of seventy-five miles per day, which, considering 
the state of the roads, was far from being amiss. 




THE AMERICAN WAR 



51 



CHAPTER III. 

Ah, me ! what perils do environ 

The man that meddles with cold iron ! 

Luckily the moment we arrived at Toronto, we 
were informed that a gun-brig was about to sail 
for Niagara, on board which we were shipped. 
About sun-set we sailed, and the wind being fair, 
we arrived in the mouth of the Niagara river at 
daylight, and lost no time in ordering horses ; 
and while they were getting ready, we were anx- 
iously employed in examining and cross-examin- 
ing witnesses as to the contradictory reports 
that were in circulation as to a battle. All we 
could elicit was, that there had been some fight- 
ing, for many had heard from Queenston Heights 
the noise both of artillery and musketry. Some 
said we had been defeated, and were in full re- 
treat on Niagara ; others that we had cut the 
enemy to pieces, and that the few that were left 
were busy crossing to their own side. Of course, 
as in most matters of rumor, both reports were 
partly true and partly false. We had obtained a 
victory, but lost severely in so doing ; and the 
enemy, in consequence of the masterly arrange- 
ments of Major General Scott, one of the best 
soldiers in the American Army, (and one of the 
most gentlemanly men I ever met with,) had re- 



52 RECOLLECTIONS OF 

tired on Fort Brie ; and a body of our troops, 
under Major General Convan of the Royals, had 
pressed hard upon them, and had he not been 
disabled by a wound, it is the general opinion, 
would have followed them into the Fort. The 
first of the particulars we were told by an officer 
who had come from the field on the spur, with 
the despatches, and he advised me as a friend 
(for we were old acquaintances) to stay where I 
was, and get my hospital in readiness, for, he as- 
sured me, that from the manner our Regiment 
had been handled, I would have quite enough to 
do at home without going abroad to look for ad- 
ventures. Accordingly, upon inquiring where my 
wounded were to be put, I was shown a ruinous 
fabric, built of logs, called Butler's Barracks, from 
having been built during the revolutionary war 
by Butler's Rangers for their temporary accom- 
modation. Nothing could be worse constructed 
for an hospital for wounded men — not that it was 
open to every wind that blew, for at midsummer 
in Canada that is rather an advantage ; but 
there was a great want of room, so that many 
had to be laid on straw on the floor, and these 
had the best of it, for their comrades were put 
into berths one above another as in a transport 
or packet, where it was impossible to get round 
them to dress their wounds, and their removal 
gave them excrutiating pain. 

In the course of the morning I had my hands 
full enough. Our Surgeon had gone to Scotland 
in a state of health which rendered recovery hope- 
less, and our senior assistant, naturally of a deli- 



THE AMERICAN WAR 53 

cate constitution, and suffering under disease at 
the time of the action, had the last of his strength 
exhausted in bringing his wounded down. Wag- 
gon after waggon arrived, and before mid-day I 
found myself in charge of two hundred and twen- 
ty wounded, including my own Regiment, prison- 
ers and militia, with no one to assist me but my 
hospital Serjeant, who, luckily for me, was a man 
of sound sense and great experience, who made a 
most able second ; but with all this the charge 
was too much for us, and many a poor fellow 
had to submit to amputation whose limb might 
have been preserved had there been only time to 
take reasonable care of it. But under the circum- 
stances of the case it was necessary to convert a 
troublesome wound into a simple one, or to lose 
the patient's life from want of time to pay him 
proper attention. 

One of the many blunders of this blundering 
war, was that the Staff of the Army was never 
where it was wanted. The Medical and Commis- 
sariat Staffs, for instance, were congregated at 
the headquarters at Quebec, where they were in 
redundancy, with nothing for them to do, while a 
Staff Surgeon and an Hospital Mate were all 
that was allowed for the Army of the Right, — 
men who must have been active beyond all pre- 
cedent if they could keep the office business, the 
accounts and returns square, without even at- 
tempting to interfere with the practice ; and all 
this at a time too, when there was hardly a regi- 
ment in the field that had its full complement of 
medical officers. 



54 RECOLLECTIONS OF 

There is hardly on the face of the earth a less 
enviable situation than that of an Army Surgeon 
after a battle — worn out and fatigued in body and 
mind, surrounded by suffering, pain and 
misery, much of which he knows it is not in his 
power to heal or even to assuage. While the bat- 
tle lasts these all pass unnoticed, but they com© 
before the medical man afterwards in all their 
sorrow and horror, stripped of all the excitement 
of the "heady fight." 

It would be a useful lesson to cold-blooded poli- 
ticians, who calculate on a war costing so many 
lives and so many limbs as they would calculate 
on a horse costing so many pounds — or to the 
thoughtless at home, whom the excitement of a 
gazette, or the glare of an illumination, more 
than reconciles to the expense of a war — to wit- 
ness such a scene, if only for one hour. This sim- 
ple and obvious truth was suggested to my mind 
by the exclamation of a poor woman. I had 
two hundred and twenty wounded turned in upon 
me that morning, and among others an American 
farmer, who had been on the field either as a mil- 
itia man or a camp follower. He was nearly six- 
ty years of age, but of a most Herculean frame. 
One ball had shattered his thigh bone, and an- 
other lodged in his body, the last obviously mor- 
tal. His wife, a respectable elderly looking wom- 
an, came over under a flag of truce, and immed- 
iately repaired to the hospital, where she found 
her husband lying on a truss of straw, writhing 
in agony, for his sufferings were dreadful. Such 
an accumulation of misery seemed to have stun- 



THE AMERICAN WAR 55 

ned her, for she ceased wailing, sat down on the 
ground, and taking her husband's head on her 
lap, continued long, moaning and sobbing, while 
the tears flowed fast down her face ; she seemed 
for a considerable time in a state of stupor, till 
awakened by a groan from her unfortunate hus- 
band, she clasped her hands, and looking wildly 
around, exclaimed, u O that the King and the 
President were both here this moment to see the 
misery their quarrels lead to — they surely would 
never go to war again without a cause that they 
could give as a reason to God at the last day, 
for thus destroying the creatures that He hath 
made in his own image." In half an hour the 
poor fellow ceased to suffer. 

I never underwent such fatigue as I did for the 
first week at Butler's Barracks. The weather 
was intensely hot, the flies were in myriads, and 
lighting on the wounds, deposited their eggs, so 
that maggots were bred in a few hours, produc- 
ing dreadful irritation, so that long before I could 
go round dressing the patients, it was necessary 
to begin again ; and as I had no assistant but 
my serjeant, our toil was incessant. For two 
days and two nights, I never sat down ; when 
fatigued 1 sent my servant down to the river for a 
change of linen, and having dined and dressed, 
went back to my work quite refreshed. On the 
morning of the third day, however, I fell asleep 
on my feet, with my arm embracing the post of 
one of the berths. It was found impossible to 
awaken me, so a truss of clean straw was laid 
on the floor, on which I was deposited, and an 



56 RECOLLECTIONS OF 

hospital rug thrown over me ; and there I slept 
soundly for five hours without ever turning. 

My instructions were, as soon as a man could 
be safely removed, to ship him for York, and 
as the whole distance was by water conveyance, 
and there were ships of war always in readiness, 
and as my men were eminently uncomfortable 
where they were, I very soon thinned my hospi- 
tal, and the few that remained over were sent to 
a temporary general hospital, and I was de- 
spatched to Chippawa in the neighborhood of the 
Falls of Niagara. 

My duty here was to keep a kind of a medical 
boarding house. The sick and wounded from the 
Army were forwarded to me in spring waggons, 
and I took care of them during the night, and in 
the morning I forwarded them on to Niagara by 
the same conveyance, so that my duty commenc- 
ed about sun-set, and terminated at sun-rise. By 
this arrangement I had the whole of the day to 
myself, and in the vicinity of the Falls there was 
no difficulty in employing it agreeably. My first 
business on my arrival, on a beautiful summer 
afternoon, was to visit the Table Rock. My first 
sight of the Falls most woefully disappointed me, 
— it was certainly grander than any fall I had 
ever seen, those of the Clyde included ; but it was 
not on that scale of magnificence I had been led 
to expect, the opposite shore seemed within a 
stone's throw, and the height of the Fall not very 
great. I walked to the edge of the rock, and 
seated myself with my legs dangling over, and 
blessed my stars that I was not a man to be 



THE AMERICAN WAR 57 

thrown into ecstacies and raptures merely be- 
cause other people had been so. After about a 
quarter of an hour's contemplation I resolved to 
return to my quarters, and previous to rising, I 
bent forward and looked straight down. Below 
me were two men fishing, diminished by the dis- 
tance — 

"The fishermen that walked upon the beach 
Appeared like mice." 

This immediately gave me a notion of the height 
I was perched upon ; a sense of sickness and gid- 
diness came over me, and, like Edgar, I prudent- 
ly resolved — 

"I'll look no more, 

Lest the brain turn, and the deficient sight 

Topple down headlong." 

But I did not make my retreat in a manner quite 
so dignified as could have been wished, for in 
coming down the bank I had unslung my sword, 
and was carrying it in my hand ; it I pitched 
backwards over my head, and throwing myself 
first on the broad of my back, I rolled over half 
a dozen times, till I thought myself a sufficient 
distance from the verge of the precipice to get 
upon my legs, and it will easily be believed I was 
in no hurry to return to my former position. 

I then set on foot a series of experiments to 
ascertain the width of the Falls, by throwing 
stones across, but by some extraordinary fatali-> 
ty they seemed to drop from my hand into the 
enormous cauldron that boiled and smoked be- 
low. Next day I came armed with an Indian 



58 RECOLLECTIONS OF 

bow, but the arrows met with no greater suc- 
cess than the stones — they,, too, dropt as if im- 
pelled by a child's force ; and it was not til 1 ! after 
I looked at the Falls in every aspect that I con- 
vinced myself that they were such a stupendous 
work of nature as they really are. The fact is, 
there is nothing at hand to compare them with, 
and a man must see them often, and from every 
different point of view, to have any proper con- 
ception of the nature of them. I never heard of 
any one except Mrs. Boyle Corbett who was sat- 
isfied with seeing the Falls from her bed-room 
window while dressing for dinner ; but I have 
often been amused, while staying at the hotel 
there, to see a succession of respectable people 
come from Buffalo to Chippawa by steam, take 
the stage that stops an hour at the Falls, dine, 
and see them, and start for Queenston, quite con- 
vinced that they had seen everything worth see- 
ing in the neighborhood. Getting tired of the in- 
active life I was leading, I applied to get into the 
field, and it luckily so happened that another 
medical man had as great a desire to quit it as I 
to get into it ; accordingly, an exchange was soon 
agreed upon — he being duly installed in the Chip- 
pawa hospital, and I receiving the route to join 
the Army before Fort Erie. 

The leaguer before Fort Erie had been always 
called the "Camp," and I certainly expected that, 
like other camps, it would have been provided 
with tents ; but in this I was mistaken. It was 
rather a bivouac than a camp, the troops shelter- 
ing themselves under some branches of trees that 



THE AMERICAN WAR 59 

only collected the scattered drops of rain, and 
sent them down in a stream on the heads of the 
inhabitants, and as it rained incessantly for two 
months, neither clothes nor bedding could be kept 
dry. I, though a young soldier, showed myself 
an old one, for my friend Tom F having rath- 
er a better hut than his neighbors, I took up my 
quarters there, and his bed being raised on fork- 
ed sticks, I placed my own under it, so that the 
rain had to penetrate through his bed clothes 
and mattress before it could reach me. 

This arrangement did admirably for some 
time, till one night we were visited by the most 
tremendous thunder storm I ever witnessed in 
this or any other country, and accompanied with 
a deluge of rain, that might have done credit to 
Noah's flood. The hut was very soon swimming, 
and I was awoke by my bed being overflowed, 
and started up to get out, but the water that 
flooded the floor softened the earth in which the 
forked sticks that supported Tom's bed were 
driven, and it falling forward jammed me in 
among the wet bed clothes, where I was nearly 
drowned, till Tom starting to his feet allowed me 
to raise the wreck and crawl on all-fours from 
under it. 

I may here remark what has always struck me 
as a great deficiency in the military education of 
the British Army— they are too much taken care 
of by their officers, and never taught to take 
care of themselves. In quarters their every mo- 
tion is under the surveillance of their officers— 
the Captain and Subaltern of the day visit them 



60 RECOLLECTIONS OF 

each twice a day, and the Commanding Officer 
and one or other of the Majors frequently, to 
say nothing of the Surgeon and the Captain of 
their Company, who, if he (as sometimes hap- 
pens) is a man possessed of a spirit of fidgetty 
zeal for the service, actually harasses them to 
death by his kind attention to their wants. 

It must be certified that their room is duly 
swept and cleaned, their bedding regularly mad«» 
up and folded, their meals properly dressed, and 
it is not even left to their own discretion to eat 
them when dressed, but an officer must see and 
certify that fact. 

Their shaving, their ablutions, their cleaning 
their shoes and clothes, all come under the same 
strict supervision, so that at last they get into 
the notion that their comfort, cleanliness, feeding 
and clothing, all are the duty and business of 
their officers, they having no interest in the mat- 
ter, and that what they are not ordered to do 
for their own relief they may leave undone In 
the sister service this is not so. A sailor will 
mend his clothes, will leave his hammock proper- 
ly fitted, his bedding properly made, and his 
comforts so far as depends upon himself, proper- 
ly cared for, whether his officers order it or not. 
The result of all this excessive care and attention 
is that you make men mere children. When the 
soldier leaves his clean comfortable barracks in 
England and is put into the field, where he has 
few or none of the accommodations he had at 
home, he is utterly helpless, and his officer on 
whom he leant, is just as helpless when a new 



THE AMERICAN WAR 6l 

state of things arises, as he can possibly be. All 
this was most fully illustrated before Fort Erie. 
The line might nearly as well have slept in the 
open air. The incorporated Militia, on the con- 
trary, erected shanties, far superior, in warmth, 
tightness and comfort, to any canvas tent. De 
Watteville's regiment, which was recruited, chief- 
ly from the prison hulks, consisted of all the na- 
tions of Europe, but all of them had served in 
the armies of Napoleon, and all of them had 
there learned how to make the best of a bad bar- 
gain. These, though they had not the skill in the 
axe inherent in their brethren of the Militia, took 
down hemlock boughs (a species of the pine, 
"pinus canadensis,") and cutting off the tails of 
them, made thatched wigwams, perfectly weath- 
erproof ; and though they could not equal the 
Canadian Militia in woodcraft, they greatly ex- 
celled them in gastronomic lore ; and thus, while 
our fellows had no better shift than to frizzle 
their rations of salt provisions on the ends of 
their ramrods, these being practical botanists, 
sent out one soldier from each mess, who gather- 
ed a haversack full of wild pot herbs, with which 
and a little flour their ration was converted into 
a capital kettle of soup. 

I shall have occasion to show hereafter how 
easily those camp habits may be acquired; mean- 
time I have only to remark that, were they gen- 
erally understood, an army might often be kept 
in the field in an infinitely more serviceable con- 
dition than it now is, and the prevalence of ague 
and dysentery in a body of men exposed to hard- 



62 RECOLLECTIONS OF 

ship and privation, if not totally arrested, might 
at least be very much diminished. I lately saw 
a very clever article on this subject by Sir J. K. 
Alexander of the 32d Regt., now quartered at 
London, U.C., and I wrote him a very long and 
a very prosy letter thereanent. My positions, if 
I remember aright, were, first — That every Regi- 
ment in Canada should be made a Light Infantry 
Regiment, insomuch as they ought to be taught 
to understand and obey the bugle ; secondly, that 
they should be taught the use of the axe, without 
which a Regiment is absolutely helpless in the 
woods, and this might be done by making them 
chop their own firewood, and giving them the 
money that is otherwise given to the contractor : 
and thirdly, that they should be taken into the 
woods for a month every summer, with a party of 
woodsmen to teach them how to erect shanties, 
cut fire-wood and provide for themselves in such 
a situation. Even the Commissariat Department 
(the most important in modern warfare) may be 
dispensed with by able woods-men. Sir William 
Johnson marched his Regiment, who were all 
woods-men, from the Mohawk River to Fort Nia- 
gara, through the woods, requiring no other sup- 
port, on that long line of march, than their rifles 
were amply sufficient to supply them with. 

When I arrived at Fort Brie, I found myself ap- 
pointed to the very service I would have chosen 
had I had the right of choosing. A corps of six 
flank companies was organized under the com- 
mand of Lieutenant Colonel Drummond, of Kel- 
tie, then commandant of the 104th Regiment. 



THE AMERICAN WAR 63 

Colonel Drummond was everything that could 
be required in a soldier ; brave, generous, open- 
hearted and good natured, he added to all these 
the talent of a first-rate tactitian; and if at times 
eccentricities broke out through all these, any one 
who knew him must have agreed with his clans- 
man, and I believe kinsman, Sir Gordon Drum- 
mond, that "all these eccentricities would one 
day mellow down into sound common sense, and 
that Keltie would be an honor to the service." 
Alas ! his prophecy was destined never to be ful- 
filled — that was his last campaign, and he fell in 
it as a brave man and a soldier would wish to 
fall, a death far less to be pitied than envied. But 
I am anticipating. We were divided into three 
brigades — let not the old soldier suppose that 
these were such brigades as are generally in the 
army. Our force never amounted to 9,000 men, 
including artillery, cavalry and militia, and these 
took their tour of piquet duty in rotation, so 
that we had one day of duty, were relieved the 
next, and on the fourth again took our turn. 
This, all things considered, especially alarms and 
skirmishes^ when we all turned out, was pretty 
hard work, but we were in high spirits, and it 
never affected us. One of the great drawbacks 
of the service in Canada was that we got the 
rubbish of every department in the army. Any 
man whom The Duke deemed unfit for the Penin- 
sula was considered as quite good enough for the 
Canadian market, and in nothing was this more 
conspicuous than in our Engineer Department. 
Without the semblance of a battering train, it 



64 RECOLLECTIONS OF 

was deemed expedient to besiege Fort Krie, and 
the ground was occupied, parties sent in advance, 
and batteries ordered to be constructed. Our 
first essay in this line was a battery on the main 
road leading to the Fort, which was to breach 
the strong stone building in the centre of it, on 
which were mounted, if I recollect rightly, one 
iron 24-pounder, one 18-pounder and two brass 
field 24-pounders. I have never seen before or 
since, any like them, but they were of the time 
of George II., and were admirable guns in the 
field, though not quite the best that could be used 
for breaching the wall of a fort. A brass and an 
iron mortar were afterwards added to this most 
efficient battering train ; the latter, however, 
having no bed, was placed in one of oak, which 
it split almost as often as it was fired. After 
much skirmishing with the enemy and the cover- 
ing parties, the battery was at last opened, and 
gentle reader ! if ever you saw what is termed 
hopping bowling at cricket you may have some 
idea how our fire operated. I very much doubt 
if one shot in ten reached the rampart at all, and 
the fortunate exceptions that struck the stone 
building at which they were aimed, rebounded 
from its sides as innocuous as tennis balls. 

The fact is the distance had been miscalculat- 
ed, and we were attempting to breach a wall at 
a distance that it was scarcely possible to hit it. 
The enemy knew their distance better, and man- 
aged to pitch shot and shell among us in a wav 
that was anything but pleasant. 



THE AMERICAN WAR 65 

I remember one day while I was in the battery, 
admiring our abortive attempts to do any mis- 
chief, while a gun of the enemy was practising 
with the most admirable precision on us, Mr. K., 
of the Glengarries, lounged into the battery, and 
casually asked the Commanding Engineer how 
far we were from the Fort. He replied about 
seven hundred yards. Mr. K. said he thought 
double the distance would be nearer the mark ;— 
this brought on a dispute, which Mr. K. offered 
to settle by either cutting a fuse or laying a gun 
for the supposed distance. To this it was replied 
that both the powder and the fuses were bad, 
and no faith could be had in them. Mr. K. then 
asked leave to lay the 24-pounder, and the Engi- 
neer, with a sneer, looking at his green jacket, 
observed, that there was some difference between 
a rifle and a 24-pounder ; however, Mr. K. then 
himself on the trail of the gun, brought out the 
coign further than it had been before, and from 
the orders he gave to the artillery even, showed, 
at least, that he knew the words of command in 
working a gun. The presiding Engineer, seeing 
the elevation he was taking, asked him if he was 
aiming at the truck of the flagstaff of the Fort. 
He replied, no— the site of the embrazure would 
be high enough for him. The gun was fired, and 
the ball entered the sand bags about a foot be- 
low the mark. He then asked leave to try a sec- 
ond shot. He laid the gun with great care, and 
took a long while to do it,— at last he gave the 
word "fire," away went the ball, and driving the 
sand up from the site of the embrazure, took the 



66 RECOLLECTIONS OF 

enemy's gun on the transom, and capsized it. 
"Pray, sir," said the Engineer, "where might 
you have learned to lay guns?" "At Woolwich," 
was the reply, "where I was three years Serjeant 
Major of Artillery." 

It was then resolved that another battery 
should be erected some hundreds of yards in ad- 
vance, and to the right of the first. Accordingly, 
our brigade was sent out to drive the enemy's 
piquets out of the wood in our front, and estab- 
lish parties to cover the workmen. 

This duty was performed in good style, but 
with considerable loss on our part, for in a wood 
the advancing party always acts to disadvan- 
tage, as the retreating can fire from under cover, 
and retreat in the smoke ; whereas the advancing 
party must necessarily expose himself somewhat, 
the quantum of exposure depending much on his 
knowledge of his business in advancing in such a 
way as will give his antagonists as little chance 
as may be of taking a steady aim at him. 

The ground was accordingly chosen, and the 
third effort commenced. The enemy were aware 
of what we were about, so they kept up a con- 
stant fire of round shot and shells upon the work- 
ing parties. The direction of their practice was 
admirable, but they seemed to have altogether 
lost their knowledge of elevation, for their shot 
was uniformly over our heads. At last the bat- 
tery was declared ready to open, but, as it was 
masked by a considerable belt of trees, these had, 
of course, to be felled, and that required a strong 
covering, and an equally strong working party. 



THE AMERICAN WAR 67 

If the enemy had failed with their round shot 
against the men in the trenches, they were infi- 
nitely more fortunate with their grape against 
the covering and working party. This was by far 
the bloodiest bush skirmish we had. The party 
with which I was, though not 120 strong, had six 
killed and about thirty wounded ; however, we 
stuck obstinately to it, and at last our object 
was achieved. The battery was unmasked, and 
the Lord have mercy on the defenders of the 
Fort, for we would have none! "Mistakes will 
creep into the best regulated families." When all 
this profuse waste of life, time and labor had 
been gone into, it was discovered that the bat- 
tery had been erected without taking the levels, 
and that a rise of ground in front of it prevented 
us even from seeing the Fort. This at once de- 
monstrated that the battery was useless, and ex- 
plained the reason why the American shot had 
been so innocuous. Di:ring the whole time we lay 
before Fort Erie, bush-skirmishing was an every 
day's occurrence, and though the numbers lost in 
each of these affairs may seem but trifling, yet 
the aggregate of men put hors de combat in a. 
force so small as ours became very serious in the 
long run. They generally commenced with some 
accidental rencontre of videttes — their firing 
brought out the piquet, then the brigade on duty, 
and then, not unfrequently, the brigade next for 
duty. I think, on a fair average of three months, 
I enjoyed this amusement about three times a 
week. 



68 RECOLLECTIONS OF 

Excepting only a melee of cavalry, a bush skir- 
mish is the only aspect in which modern warfare 
appears in anything picturesque. Iyook at all 
attempts at painting a modern battle, and unless 
the painter takes such a distance as to render 
everything indistinct, you have nothing but a 
series of stiff, hard, regular, straight lines, that 
might represent a mathematical diagram in uni- 
form. Not so with light infantry in a wood. 
There a man ceases to be merely a part of a ma- 
chine, or a point in a long line. Both his person- 
al safety and his efficiency depend on his own 
knowledge and tact. To stand straight upright 
and be shot at is no part of his duty ; his great 
object is to annoy the enemy, and keep himself 
safe ; and so far was this carried by the tacti- 
cians of the Prussian school, that in a German 
Contingent, which served on this continent dur- 
ing the revolutionary war, a yager has been flog- 
ged for getting himself wounded. 

Perhaps there can be no military scene more 
fit for the pencil than a body of light infantry 
awaiting an attack. The variety of attitude ne- 
cessary to obtain cover — the breathless silence — 
the men attentive by eye and ear — every glance 
(furtively lowered) directed to the point — some 
kneeling, some lying down, and some standing 
straight behind a tree— the officer with his silver 
whistle in his hand, ready to give the signal to 
commence firing, and the bugle boy looking earn- 
estly in his officer's face waiting for the next 
order. This is worth painting, which cannot, by 
any one having a decent regard for truth, be said 



THE AMERICAN WAR 69 

of the base reliefs that we see on the tombs of 
heroes, of a line of men marching in step, each 
with his bayonet levelled at precisely the same 
angle, in a manner that would draw forth the 
enthusiastic approbation of the shade of Sir 
David Dundas, but which no effort of the genius 
of sculptor or painter could even render more 
tolerable, than a well executed representation of 
the same quantity of park pales. 

This species of warfare necessarily draws forth 
the individual talent of the soldier. I once saw 
a soldier of the 32nd take two American sentries 
prisoners, by placing his cap and great coat on a 
bush, and while they were busy firing at his im- 
age and superscription, he fetch'd a circuit, got 
behind them, waited till both of their firelocks 
were discharged, and then drove them before him 
into the picquet guard. 

The Glengarry Regiment being provincials, pos- 
sessed many excellent shots. They were not 
armed with the rifle, but with what I greatly pre- 
fer to that arm, the double sighted light infan- 
try musket. A rifle is by no means suited for a 
day's fighting ; when it gets foul from repeated 
firing it is difficult even to hammer the ball down, 
and the same foulness which clogs the barrel 
must injure the precision of the ball. The well 
made smooth barrel on the contrary, is to a cer- 
tain degree scoured by every discharge, and can 
stand sixty rounds without the necessity of clean- 
ing. Nor is it in the precision of its aim for any 
useful purpose inferior to the rifle, that is to say 
in the hands of a man who knows how to use it. 



70 RECOLLECTIONS OF 

I have seen a Sergeant of the Glengarries who 
would allow you to pick out a musket from any 
of the corps, and let him load it, when he would 
knock the head off a pigeon on the top of the 
highest tree in the forest. 

In the British Army one would suppose that 
the only use of a musket was understood to be 
that it could carry a bayonet at the end of it. 
The quantity of powder allowed to be expended 
in teaching the men the use of their principal 
weapon is fifteen rounds per annum. Now, sup- 
pose such a limitation was placed on sportsmen, 
is it possible to conceive that on the twelfth of 
August, or the first of September, there could be 
found one man who could bring down a grouse 
or a partridge ? No ; the officers in command of 
corps should have an unlimited power in the ex- 
penditure of ammunition, and should only be 
made answerable for their Regiment being effi- 
cient in their practice when called into the field. 

In this regiment there were a father and three 
sons, American IT. E. Loyalists, all of them 
crack shots. In a covering party one day the 
father and one of the sons were sentries on the 
same point. An American rifleman dropped a 
man to his left, but in so doing exposed himself, 
and almost as a matter of course, was instantly 
dropped in his turn by the unerring aim of the 
father. The enemy were at that moment being 
driven in, so the old man of course( for it was a 
ceremony seldom neglected,) went up to rifle his 
-ictim. On examining his features he discovered 
&at it was his own brother. Under any circum- 



THE AMERICAN WAR 71 

stances this would have horrified most men, but 
a Yankee has much of the stoic in him, and is 
seldom deprived of his equanimity. He took pos- 
session of his valuables, consisting of an old sil- 
ver watch and a clasp knife, his rifle and ap- 
pointments, coolly remarking", that it "served 
him right for fighting for the rebels, when all the 
rest of his family fought for King George." It 
appeared that during the revolutionary war his 
father and all his sons had taken arms in the 
King's cause, save this one, who had joined the 
Americans. They had never met him from that 
period till the present moment ; but such is the 
virulence of political rancour, that it can over- 
come all the ties of nature. 

With all our hardships and privations there 
was nowhere to be met with a merrier set of fel- 
lows than in the camp before Fort Erie. One of 
the chief promoters of this was worthy Billy R. 
of the King's, who, to all the qualifications of a 
most accomplished soldier, added all the light- 
headedness and wit of an Irishman. 

There was in the camp an old thorn, up which 
a wild vine had climbed, and then descended in 
long branches to the ground, forming a natural 
bower impervious to the rays of the sun. The 
root of this tree was Billy's favourite seat (for he 
was too much of the Falstafi build to be more 
peripatetic than was absolutely necessary) and 
no sooner was he seated than a group of officers 
was established around him, and to these he 
would tell funny stories and crack jokes by the 
hour together. He was appointed to the com- 



72 RECOLLECTIONS OP 

mand of the Incorporated Militia, and a more ju- 
dicious selection could not have been made, not 
only on account of his military talents, but his 
invincible good temper and good humour, which 
endeared him to the men, and made them take 
a pleasure and a pride in obeying his orders and 
attending to his instructions. Some idea may be 
formed of his talents in this way, when I state 
that in the course of a very few months, he ren- 
dered a body of raw lads from the plough-tail as 
efficient a corps as any in the field. 

Towards the end of the business, when his men 
were acting as light infantry, he was knocked off 
his horse by a ball, which struck him in the fore- 
head and came out over the ear. This would 
have knocked the life out of most men, but it did 
knock the wit out of Billy. He was raised and 
placed in a blanket, his eyes still fixed on his 
men, who he saw were pushing on in a way to 
expose themselves. "Stop till I spake to the 
boys," said he to the men, who were carrying 
him off the field ; "Boys!" shouted he, "I have 
only one remark to make, and that is, that a 
stump or a log will stand a leaden bullet better 
than the best of yees, and therefore give them 
the honor to be your front rank men." Poor 
Billy survived this severe wound many years, but 
at last its effects began to tell. He became para- 
lytic of the lower extremities, and had to be car- 
ried from place to place ; but his wit and good 
humor never forsook him. He died in the Isle of 
Wight in 1827, on his way to Canada to draw his 
land. 



THE AMERICAN WAR 73 

One day, when relieved from piquet, I announc- 
ed to Col. P., who commanded our brigade, that 
I had discovered a short way through the woods 
to the camp, and accordingly I led the way, he 
and Captain F., of the Glengarries, following. 
By some fatality I mistook the path, and took a 
wrong turn, so that instead of finding the camp 
we came right on the top of an American piquet, 
which opened fire upon us at about fifty yards 
distance. Being use to this we were behind trees 
in a moment, and the next were scampering in 
different directions at greater or less angles from 
the enemy. It may well be supposed I did not 
wait on our brigadier, during the time we were 
off duty, to receive thanks for my services as a 
guide, nor when we did go on duty again was I 
at all anxious to obtrude myself upon him ; in- 
deed I kept as far from him as I could, but in 
going his rounds at daylight he came up with me 
seated by a piquet fire at. the extreme left of the 
line. He saluted me most graciously, alluded to 
our late exploit as a good joke, and asked me to 
breakfast with him. "Ho, ho," thinks I, "he has 
forgotten it all, and I'm forgiven— this is as it 
should be." Lounging about after breakfast, and 
talking over indifferent matters, a sputtering 
fire began a little to our left, and the Colonel or- 
dering a look out on the right, proceeded, fol- 
lowed by me, to the scene of action. We soon 
saw that this was the point of attack, so he sent 
me to order up the reserve. This done I rejoined 
him, and found him standing coolly giving his 
orders in the middle of a whistling of bullets, far 



74 RECOLLECTIONS OF 

too thick to be pleasant. I stood by his side for 
some minutes, thankful that none of these mis- 
siles had a billet on us, when on a sudden I felt 
a severe sharp pain from my brow to the back 
of my head at the same moment the Colonel ex- 
claimed : "By G — d ! you are shot through the 
head." I sunk upon one knee, and taking off my 
forage cap felt along, my head for blood, but none 
was to be found. "It is only a graze," sai*d I. 
"Colonel, is there any mark?" "Yes," said he, 
"there is a red mark, but not from a ball, it 
came from my switch. You gave me a d — 1 of a 
fright the other day — now I have given you one, 
so we are quits." 

Weeks passed at this kind of warfare, that 
served no purpose to the parties except to harass 
one another, and mutually to thin our ranks. 
The enemy determined on a grand attack, that, 
but for an accident, would have finished the cam- 
paign and our army together. They collected all 
the force they could raise, giving the militia a 
long exemption from playing at soldiers in their 
own country for one day's active exertion in ours. 
They at the same time marched a body of troops 
down their own side of the river, to cross and 
take us in rear. The time was altogether well 
chosen. The principal part of the brigade on 
duty was De Watteville's regiment, who being 
foreigners, and formerly soldiers of Napoleon, 
could not have any very ardent desire for a vic- 
tory on our side. The day was cloudy, with a 
continued drizzling rain. In the forenoon the 
troops from the fort were marched out in small 



THE AMERICAN WAR 75 

parties, and stationed in rear of the piquets, and 
towards the afternoon all was in readiness. 

A sudden and unexpected attack was made. 
The out ports were forced — the battery on the 
right stormed, and the guns disabled ; the second 
battery was also stormed, and the wheels of one 
gun cut to pieces, and those of a second injured, 
when two companies of the 82d, under Captain 
Pattison, rushed up to the assistance of the 
piquet which was guarding it. They poured a 
volley into the mass of the enemy, who were 
huddled together into so small a space that they 
could not return it. Pattison immediately sprung 
forward, and called out to the American officer 
in command to surrender, as resistance would 
only cause loss of life and could do no good. He 
did give an order to ground arms, and some of 
his men were in the act of doing so, when an 
American soldier raised his rifle and shot Patti- 
son through the heart. In one moment a charge 
was made by the 82nd into the battery, and 
every soul in it put to the bayonet, amounting, 
I think, to upwards of two hundred men. 

By this time the alarm was given in the camp, 
and the men, without waiting for orders, rushed 
out— their officers, who were at dinner, followed 
at speed. The action became general, and the 
enemy, finding that their object in destroying the 
batteries had failed, returned in some confusion. 
It is said that in war any new weapon, or any 
new manoeuvre, strikes the enemy with terror, 
and here we had an instance of it. A body of 
the 82nd were opposed to a party of riflemen in 



76 RECOLLECTIONS OF 

the wood. The Captain commanding, to the ut- 
ter astonishment of all of us old bush-whackers, 
gave orders to charge, and the order was exe- 
cuted in a very spirited style. This we thought 
was consigning our men to inevitable destruc- 
tion ; but no such thing : the riflemen had no 
more idea of a bayonet being pointed at them 
than they had of being swallowed up by an 
earthquake ; and when the smoke cleared away, 
and they saw the 82nd within twenty yards of 
them, moving on at the "pas de charge," it 
shook their nerves, — they fired, to be sure, but 
with little effect, and then ran — they were too 
late, however. The flat-foots got within their 
deadly range, that is, bayonet's length — they 
skivered many of them, and others were shot at 
two muskets' length, and driven out of the 
woods to the esplanade of the Fort, where they 
were treated with a parting volley ; and the guns 
of the Fort immediately opening on us, we took 
the hint, and withdrew under the cover of the 
woods. 

I, like the rest of the dining parties, was 
alarmed by the firing, and ran to the trenches. 
On my road I met with about twenty of the men 
of my own Regiment, and took them with me, 
being guided to where the fire was thickest by 
the noise. I found myself along with my friend, 
Mautass, a Soc Chief, and his Indians. I have 
had an opportunity of seeing bush-fighting in the 
Indian fashion. It seemed to me to be a point 
with them at every discharge of their rifle to 
shift their position, and whenever they knocked 



THE AMERICAN WAR 77 

a fellow over, their yelling was horrible. I was 
close to Mautass himself, and whenever he per- 
formed this feat, after giving the triumphal yell, 
he jumped behind a tree, and seemed to be en- 
gaged in prayer — perhaps to thank the great 
Spirit for his success, or as likely to petition him 
that he might knock over a few more. 

When the enemy retired, the Indians who had 
shown so much wariness in the fight, and had 
talked to me of the folly of my young men ex- 
posing themselves, suddenly seemed to lose all 
their caution, and bounded forward with a hor- 
rible yell, threw themselves on the retreating ene- 
my with their tomahawks, and were soon out of 
our sight ; but as we advanced, we saw they left 
their trace behind them in sundry cleft skulls — 
They also, when their opponents were from fif- 
teen to twenty yards in advance of them, threw 
their tomahawks with unerring aim and great 
force, burying the head of the hatchet up to the 
eye in the body of their opponents. 

I afterwards requested the Chief to show me 
how he threw the tomahawk. He accordingly 
cut a small chip out of the bark of a tree, and 
standing some fourteen yards off, and taking his 
tomahawk with its pole to the front, he threw it, 
and it was buried some inches into the oak, with 
the handle upmost, it having turned round in its 
flight. 

This is analogous to the custom of the Portu- 
guese, who, in throwing the knife, always project 
it with the handle foremost, but it as uniformly 
strikes with the point. 



78 RECOLLECTIONS OF 

These Socs or Sacs were the only genuine un- 
adulterated Indians I ever saw. They were very 
fine men, few of them under six feet high, and 
their symmetry perfectly faultless. In action they 
fought all but naked, which gymnastic undressing 
gave you the means of seeing their forms to the 
greatest advantage. 

Their features, too, had not the rounded form 
or stolid expression of many Indian tribes, par- 
ticularly those towards the North. They had 
European features, or, more properly, those of 
the Asiatic. Their Chief had so strong a resem- 
blance to George the Third that even the tribe 
called the head on the half penny Mautass, and 
he certainly might have passed for a bronze 
statue of that worthy and estimable Monarch. 

After the action was over, and it was drawing 
towards dusk, I rapidly traversed the ground 
with a strong party to look out for wounded, 
and rinding only a few of the enemy, I ordered 
them to be carried to the hospital, but I preced- 
ed them to make preparations for their recep- 
tion. When nearing the Camp, I found a party 
of the band of our Regiment carrying in a blanket 
an American officer mortally wounded, who was 
greedily drinking water from one of the soldier's 
canteens. I ordered them to lay him down, and 
set myself to dress his wound. He calmly said, 
"Doctor, it's all in vain — my wound is mortal, 
and no human skill can help me — leave me here 
with a canteen of water near me, and save your- 
self — you are surrounded, and your only chance 
of escape is to take to the woods in a northerly 



THE AMERICAN WAR 70 

direction, and then make your way east for 
Queenston, — there is not a man of your army 
who can escape by any other means — I am not at 
liberty to tell you more." I, however, ordered 
the men to carry him to a hut belonging to an 
officer of my own Regiment, who undertook to 
sit by him till my return. After he had been put 
to bed I left him, and when I returned during 
the night from my hospital, he was dead. He 
proved to be Colonel Wood of the American En- 
gineers — a man equally admired for his talents 
and revered for his virtues. His calmness and 
courage in the hour of death, with his benevo- 
lence and kindness to myself and others, who 
were doing any little they could to render his 
last moments easy, convinced me that he deserv- 
ed the high character which all his brother offi- 
cers that I afterwards met with uniformly gave 
him. 

Next morning I discovered what the poor Col- 
onel alluded to. The party sent down the right 
bank of the Niagara to take us in rear, on ar- 
riving at the place where it was determined they 
should cross, saw a body of troops cooking their 
dinners on the bank, and supposing their plan 
was betrayed, desisted from the attempt. 

The fact was, it was a party of men coming up 
to join their Regiments in the field, who had 
halted there by chance, and by this accident we 
were saved, for had a small force landed they 
must have taken our baggage, ammunition and 
field guns (for the camp was deserted except by 
the few guards that were mounted more for show 



80 RECOLLECTIONS OF 

than use), and had they attacked us in rear, 
must have thrown us into inextricable confusion. 
I could now see well enough why the enemy were 
so easily driven in. Had the expected attack on 
our rear taken place, there is no doubt they 
would been out again in double their former 
force ; but they had done all that there was any 
necessity for them to do — they had brought us 
into a general engagement, made us leave our 
camp and park of artillery undefended, and had 
their other column made the proposed attack in 
rear, their loss, severe as it was under existing 
circumstances, would have been of no account, 
compared to the advantages that must have ac- 
crued from it. 

We continued this humbugging kind of warfare 
for some time longer, when, finding there was no 
chance of us breaching strong ramparts, or 
knocking down stone towers with such artillery 
as we had to apply, and under the direction of 
such engineers as it pleased the Lord in His 
wrath to bestow upon us, it was determined to 
try the matter by a coup de main. Accordingly 
about a week before the great attempt was to 
be made, it was known in the camp, from the 
General to the drum-boy, that it was in con- 
templation. A worthy old officer of De Watte- 
ville's used to salute his friends every morning 
with — "Well, gentlemans! this would be one very 
fine day for de grand object." As the intelligence 
was so universal in our camp, it is not well sup- 
posable that it should be unknown in that of the 
enemy, and accordingly they had a full week to 



THE AMERICAN WAR 8l 

prepare for our attack. At last orders were giv- 
en for the assault. It was to be made in two 
divisions, one against the Fort, and another 
against Snake hill, a fortified camp higher up the 
lake. The troops at sun-set moved on, but before 
we had started half an hour an express was sent 
after us to recall us. Had the enemy had the 
slightest doubt of the information their spies and 
our deserters had given them as to our inten- 
tions, this must have set it at rest. Some three 
days after we had orders in form to make the 
attack, and our brigade was to lead. Never were 
men better pleased than ours were to hear this. 
We were tired of the wet bivouac they called a 
camp ; we were tired of our busy idleness! which, 
though fatal to many of our comrades, had as 
yet produced no military result ; and we knew 
that whatever they might be at a distance, the 
enemy had no chance with us at a hand-to-hand 
fight, and therefore we hailed the prospect of an 
assault as a relief from trouble — a glorious ter- 
mination to a fatiguing and harassing campaign, 
where, if we had got some credit by the Battle of 
the Falls, accounts from that date to the pres- 
ent had been pretty evenly balanced. 

I have said that it was determined that our 
brigade should lead, and never was honor more 
highly appreciated. It struck us that the Gener- 
al showed great discrimination and penetration 
in selecting the very fittest men under his com- 
mand for such a service, the more so that the 
corps of flank companies to which I belonged, 
was to lead immediately after the forlorn hope. 



82 RECOLLECTIONS OF 

We were the first for duty on that day, and the 
relief brigade was summoned out at eleven and 
marched to take up its position at twelve. We 
breakfasted at eight ; Colonel Drummond was in 
high spirits — it has sometimes struck me since 
unnaturally high, — but that idea might have pro- 
ceeded from the result. Be that as it may, cer- 
tain it is that he had a presentiment that he 
never would come out of that day's action, and 
he made no secret of that feeling either from me 
or several others of his friends. 

We sat apparently by common consent long 
after breakfast was over. Drummond told some 
capital stories, which kept us in such a roar that 
we seemed more like an after dinner than an 
after breakfast party. At last the bugles sound- 
ed the turn-out, and we rose to depart for our 
stations ; Drummond called us back, and his face 
assuming an unwonted solemnity, he said, "Now 
boys! we never will all meet together here 
again ; at least I will never again meet you. I 
feel it and am certain of it ; let us all shake 
hands, and then every man to his duty, and I 
know you all too well to suppose for a moment 
that any of you will flinch it." We shook hands 
accordingly, all round, and with a feeling very 
different from what we had experienced for the 
last two hours, fell into our places. 

On taking up our several stations on piquet, the 
weather, which had been clear became suddenly 
dark and cloudy, and a thick, drizzling rain be- 
gan to fall, which, towards evening, increased to 
a heavy shower. Colonel P., Colonel Drummond, 



THE AMERICAN WAR 83 

and some more of us, were congregated in a hut, 
anything but rain-tight ; Colonel Drummond left 
the hut, where we were smoking and talking, and 
stowed himself away in a rocket case, where he 
soon fell fast asleep. About midnight we were 
summoned to fall in without noise, and a party 
of sailors forming the forlorn hope, headed by a 
midshipman taking the lead, our corps followed 
close in their rear. When we were yet three hun- 
dred yards from the fort their videttes fired on 
us and immediately retired ; soon after the guns 
of the Fort opened, but with little or no effect. 
About 200 yards from the fort Drummond halt- 
ed, and turning to me unbuckled his sword, which 
he gave to me, telling me to keep it for his sake. 
It was a regulation sword in a steel scabbard. 
Thinking that he had no great faith in it, I of- 
fered him mine, which was a Ferrara of admir- 
able temper and edge ; but he said he had got a 
boarding pike from the sailors whom he was go- 
ing to join. He told me to stand where I was 
and not expose myself ; and these were the last 
words I ever heard him utter. 

The sailors and our corps dashed on and made 
good their lodgment in fine style, and after stand- 
ing till the last of the attacking columns was 
past, I began to feel my situation most particu- 
larly unpleasant. A man must possess more 
courage than I can pretend to, who can stand 
perfectly cool, while, having nothing to do, he is 
shot at like a target. Accordingly, I determined 
to advance at all hazards, and at least have the 
pleasure of seeing what was doing;, for my risk 



84 RECOLLECTIONS OF 

of being shot. I had not proceeded many yards 
when I stumbled over a body, and on feeling, for 
I could not see, I discovered he was wounded in 
the arm and the blood flowing copiously. He 
had fainted and fallen in attempting to get to 
the rear. I fixed a field tourniquet on his arm, 
and throwing him over my shoulder like a sack, 
carried him to a ravine in rear, and delivered him 
to the care of a Naval Surgeon I met with there. 
He proved to be Major R. of the Royals, who, 
but for my lucky stumble, would most probably 
have given promotion to the senior Captain of 
that distinguished Regiment. 

When I came up to the fort I found no difficul- 
ty in getting on the rampart, for our own men 
were in full possession ; but just as I was scram- 
bling over some dead bodies, an explosion took 
place. At first I thought it was a shell had 
burst close to me, for the noise was not greater 
if so great, as that of a large shell ; but the tre- 
mendous glare of light and falling of beams and 
rubbish soon demonstrated that it was something 
more serious. In a fact a magazine in a bastion 
had exploded, and on the top of this bastion, 
through some mistake of their orders, the 103rd 
Regiment were either posted or scrambling up ; 
all who were on the top were necessarily blown 
up, and those not killed by the shock fell on the 
fixed bayonets of their comrades in the ditch, 
and thus, after we were in possession of the 
place, in one instant the greater part of our force 
was annihilated. 



THE AMERICAN WAR 85 

All was now confusion, and — d — 1 take the hind- 
most ! How I got across the ditch, I cannot, 
nor never could call to my memory ; but I found 
myself scouring along the road at the top of my 
speed, with a running accompaniment of grape, 
cannister and musketry whistling about my ears, 
and tearing the ground at my feet. 

When about half way between the ditch and the 
ravine, I heard a voice calling on me for help. 
I found it was a wounded officer ; so, calling a 
drum-boy of the Royals, who had a stretcher, we 
laid him into it, and carried him after the man- 
ner of a hand-barrow ; he entreated us to get 
into the wood, as, on the road, we were likely to 
be cut to pieces with the shot. Accordingly we 
turned for that purpose ; but just as we were en- 
tering, a round shot cut a large bough just above 
our heads, and down it came on the top of the 
three of us. I crawled backwards and the drum- 
boy forwards ; and there we were staring at 
each other ; however, there was no time to ex- 
press our surprise. I ordered him in again, and 
I crawled in at the other side ; and by our joint 
exertions we got the poor fellow out of his un- 
comfortable situation, and once in the wood we 
were safe for the rest of our journey. I handed 
him over to some medical men in the battery, 
and went in search of my own men. 

Day not being yet fairly broken, I did not 
know whom I had been the means of saving, but 
more than twelve months after I met in the 
streets of Portsmouth with Captain C, of the 
iQSrd, who, after shaking hands with me, thank- 



86 RECOLLECTIONS OF 

ed me for my kindness to him at Fort Erie, and 
this was the first time that I ever knew the Regi- 
ment to which my man belonged, for in the im- 
perfect light I thought he had dark facings. On 
my arrival in the battery there was a scene of 
sad confusion. Sir Gordon Drummond was with 
great coolness forming the men as they came in, 
and I, with others, set to work to assist him. 
Without regard to what corps they belonged, we 
stuck them behind the breast-work, anticipating 
an attack. Sir Gordon asked me what officers 
were killed ; I told him all that I knew of, and 
when I mentioned Colonel Drummond of Keltie, 
and Colonel Scott, of Brotherton, (both like him- 
self, Perthshire lairds, and neighbors of his,) he 
seemed deeply affected. 

I sent poor Drummond's sword, by his servant, 
to his family, and reserved for a memorial, a 
string of wampum beads which he had got from 
the Indians, with whom he was an especial fa- 
vourite. This I wore round my neck six years 
afterwards in 1820, at the Cape of Good Hope, 
when his brother, being Field Officer of the day, 
riding past me observed it, and asked a gentle- 
man who had come from India in the same ship 
with me the cause of my wearing so extraordin- 
ary an ornament. On being told, he waited on 
me, and as I was the first person he had met 
with who had been present when his brother fell, 
he heard from me the circumstances I have here 
related. 

After this it was quite clear that we could get 
no good by remaining, as we had failed in the 



THE AMERICAN WAR 87 

main object of the campaign. But remain 
we did for some time, having an occasional 
skirmish with the enemy, but nothing decisive. 
At last it was determined that we should retire 
behind the Chippawa ; this we accordingly did, 
unfollowed by the enemy, who, when they saw us 
fairly gone, took themselves across the river, 
abandoning the fort they had defended so obsti- 
nately for three months ; in fact it had served all 
their purposes, which evidently were to keep us 
busy as long as we could keep the field, prevent- 
ing us doing mischief on their side by amusing us 
on our own. 

After the blow up, our little corps was broken 
up, and the companies composing it joined their 
respective battalions. My own regiment was 
wretchedly reduced ; little more than three 
months before it had gone into the Battle of the 
Falls, five hundred strong, with a full comple- 
ment of officers. Now we retired about sixty 
rank and file, commanded by a Captain, two of 
the senior Lieutenants carrying the colours, and 
myself marching in rear— voild, His Majesty's 
89th Regiment of Foot ! 




88 RECOLLECTIONS OF 



CHAPTER IV. 

We took up our ground on the left bank of the 
Chippawa, in the hope that we would be attack- 
ed in that strong position ; but nothing was 
further from the intention of the enemy than 
such a flagrant absurdity. They, from time to 
time, sent small parties to look at us; and there 
was some very distant skirmishing, which prov- 
ed very harmless amusement ; but they with- 
drew at last, and we were ordered into winter 
quarters. 

Our regiment, with the iooth, took up their 
quarters at Queenston, where we were soon 
strengthened by the recovered wounded and sick 
from the different hospitals. We were particu- 
larly happy in a commanding officer. The then 
young and handsome Marquis of Tweeddale, who 
was Lieutenant Colonel of the iooth, commanded 
our brigade : he had been educated in a good 
school, under the "Great Duke;" and, like his 
master, with an unceasing regard to the essen- 
tials of the service, he had a most sovereign 
contempt for those adventitious parts of it, which 
weaker minds are apt to consider as of the high- 
est importance. Should his lordship, in the pres- 
ent high and responsible situation which he occu- 
pies, have an opportunity of displaying his tal- 



THE AMERICAN WAR 89 

ents, I am much deceived if he will not add one 
more to the numerous band of soldiers who have 
raised their own and their country's name in the 
fields of Hindostan ; therefore, God send him a 
good war ! I have no great faith in him as a 
politician : he is too honest a man ! 

But whatever he may be, as a soldier or a 
statesman, he was a wretched bad patient; for he 
was wounded, in a way that I had every fear 
would result in a permanent lameness ; and noth- 
ing could save him but rest. I recommended 
him, therefore, to spend most of his time on a 
bed — for sofas were rather scarce in Oueenston at 
that time ; — but he persisted in riding a pony, 
with a crutch over his shoulder. Whether his mode 
of management has induced lameness or not, I do 
not know, for I have never seen him since ; but 
if he is lame, it is no fault of mine. 

Queenston, though in ruins, having, like all the 
rest of the frontier, been wantonly destroyed by 
the enemy, was then, as it is now, a very pret- 
tily-situated village ; and the rest our men ob- 
tained, after their severe fatigues, began to have 
a most salutary effect upon them}, so, as my 
senior colleague had recovered to such an ex- 
tent as to attend to the diminished duties of the 
regimental hospital there, I was despatched to 
York — now Toronto — to take charge of about 
thirty of my own men, who were in general hos- 
pital in that garrison. 

Toronto was then a dirty straggling village, 
containing about sixty houses. The church — the 
only one — was converted into a general hospital, 



90 RECOLLECTIONS OF 

and I formed my lodge in the wing of the Parlia- 
ment buildings, which had escaped, when the 
Americans had burnt the rest of that fabric. 

Our accommodations were comfortable, by 
comparison with what we had lately been obliged 
to put up with. At all events, we had a tight 
roof over our heads, a clean floor under our feet, 
and the means of fire enough to keep us warm ; 
and a soldier who is not content with this, on a 
campaign, deserves to want. My own regiment 
soon came down to form a part of the garrison 
of Toronto ; and there I remained till the month 
of December, 1814. 

At this time, it was proposed to build a large 
ship on Lake Huron — we having then so many on 
Lake Erie— that would be able, from her size, 
and the weight of her metal, to cope with the 
small vessels that composed the American flotilla 
on Lake Erie. As there is a channel through 
Lake Saint Clair, and the Rivers Detroit and 
Saint Clair, by which she could pass from the 
one lake into the other, an inlet, called Penetan- 
guishene, was selected as the proper site of a 
new dock-yard, and a better sight could hardly 
have been selected, in this, or any other, part of 
the world. It was a narrow-mouthed, deep bay, 
with plenty of water for any size of craft, and a 
fine bold shore, easily defensible against any 
ships that could approach ; but unluckily, at this 
time, Penetanguishene was in the woods, thirty 
miles from Lake Simcoe ; and before a ship of 
the line could be built, a road must be cut, and 
stones broke along it. 



THE AMERICAN WAR 9 I 

This, at mid-winter, in one of the northern- 
most points of Canada, was no easy matter. But 
when Government, in the time of war, determine 
on a measure, the word impossible, as we used to 
say in the army, is not to be found in Dundas— 
and done it must be. 

Accordingly, in the early part of December, I 
volunteered my services, and, as nobody else 
envied the job, they were accepted ; and a com- 
pany of the Canadian Fencibles, with about the 
same number of militia, under the direction of 
Colonel Cockburn, of the Quarter Master Gener- 
al's Department, was despatched up to the north, 
with instructions to have the road cut at all haz- 
ards. 

When we arrived on the banks of Lake Simcoe, 
we found it just in such a state that it could not 
possibly be crossed ; for the ice was formed, so 
that a boat could not get through it, but not 
strong enough to bear a man's weight. But, as 
there was a keen frost, we knew that this obsta- 
cle would soon be overcome ; so we took up our 
quarters in farm-houses along the margin of the 
lake. 

In two days it was considered practicable to 
cross, and I volunteered to try it. 1 equipped 
myself with a long pole, with a chisel at the end 
of it, to try the ice with, and an axe slung across 
my shoulder, and skated across, about twelve 
miles. 

The ice, though not very thick, was good, and 
quite sufficient to bear men at extended order ; 
so, on my return, I reported it practicable. Next 



92 RECOLLECTIONS OF 

morning the men were drawn out at the point 
at which it was considered the most eligible for 
getting on the ice ; but the moment we were 
ready to start, a noise, like that of very loud 
thunder, was heard, which ran round the lake, 
and across it ; and, in an inconceivably short 
time, the whole ice was broken into fragments, 
some of some acres in extent, others of only a 
few yards. What the cause of this phenomenon 
could be, I never could form even a probable con- 
jecture of, for there was no visible rise or fall of 
the water ; but I was told, by the inhabitants of 
the neighborhood, that they had more than once 
seen the same thing before. 

The question now arose what was to be done 
next? The country people recommended that 
we should wait till next day, when not only 
would the broken ice be re-united, but the water 
which had risen upon it would be frozen into one 
solid mass, rendering the whole twice as strong 
as on the day previous, when I had passed it. 

All this was undeniable, but the season was so 
far advanced, and heavy snow storms might be 
expected, so that even one day was of conse- 
quence. After due deliberation, it was resolved, 
that having a coil of rope with us, it should be 
stretched along, and each take hold of it, and 
drag his hand sleigh, on which was his knapsack 
and provisions, as well as divers tools, imple- 
ments, and stores, requisite for the expedition. 
In this guise we proceeded across the lake ; the 
disasters were numerous but none of them seri- 
ous. A fellow in stepping on a fracture of ice in 



THE AMERICAN WAR 93 

the shape of the letter V, would plump in and 
then be dragged out again by his comrades, 
amidst shouts of laughter. In this mode we pro- 
gressed for upwards of six hours, until we reach- 
ed the opposite side, where a huge pile of logs 
was kindled ; a space swept clear of snow, and 
we sat down to a late dinner. As the night ap- 
peared clear, we scattered some hemlock boughs, 
and raised a few of them to keep us from the 
wind, but upon learning that the militia, who, 
being from the neighborhood, had got over three 
weeks before us, had left a regular shanty, with- 
in a mile, we broke up our camp, and, deep as 
the snow was, and late the hour, we proceeded 
till we arrived at the spot, where trees were cut 
down, a fire lighted, and we betook ourselves to 
rest ; our previous fatigue securing us from any 
apprehension of a sleepless night. 

Next day we started along the road the militia 
had cut, and in two hours came up with them. 
As they were sufficiently numerous for one party, 
it was resolved that we should get on some 
miles in advance of them, and commence further 
up the line. The snow was about three feet deep, 
and made the marching, heavy-laden as we were, 
toilsome ; but like Columbus' egg, everything is 
comparatively easy when people know how to go 
about it. One mode of proceeding was this: six 
or seven men led on snow shoes in Indian file, 
taking care to tread down the snow equally; 
then followed the column, also in Indian file. 
A.t about every thirty yards, the leader of the 
column stepped aside, and letting the rest pass 



94 RECOLLECTIONS OF 

him, fell into the rear. By this means, after the 
fatigue of first breaking the snow, he could 
march on a beaten path, and thus, alternating 
labor and rest, the thing was comparatively 
easy. By sun-set we had made about five miles 
beyond the militia camp, and it was counted, 
considering the road, a very fair day's journey. 

It would be tiresome to detail (even if at this 
distance of time I was able to do so), the jour- 
nal of a three months' residence in the woods, 
one day being an exact counterpart of another. 
I shall, therefore, only mention the mode in 
which we got on. 

Our first care, on coming to our ground, was 
to shovel away the snow, which latterly was six 
feet deep; we then cut down as many bass-wood 
trees (a species of the pine), as we required, and 
then proceeded to erect our shanty, {chantit). 
This was done by fixing four forked sticks in the 
ground, the higher in front, from which we con- 
structed our roof. The bass-wood bark was peel- 
ed and placed upon the roof, one layer lying in 
the trough of the other, after the manner of a 
tile. The trees were then split into rough boards, 
which formed the back and sides of the mansion, 
the front being open. The snow was then shovel- 
led up so as to render all secure. Hemlock 
boughs were then strewed on the frozen ground, 
and blankets and buffalo skins over that. In 
front was a long fire, composed of six large logs, 
three at the bottom, two upon these, and one on 
the top, on the principle on which shot is piled 
in a battery ; in front, and within a yard of the 



THE AMERICAN WAR 95 

fire, was placed a log to prevent our feet being 
scorched by the intense heat, and if, during the 
night, our feet got cold, we had only to place 
our heels on the top of the log, and in a few sec- 
onds they were often more than comfortably 
warm. 

Two shanties were always placed opposite each 
other, and this had a double advantage ; they 
sheltered the wind from each other, and one fire 
did for both. In the case of the officers of the 
party, their servants occupied the opposite one, 
so they were always within call. 

The labor of cutting the road in deep snow was 
great, and the expense proportionately enormous. 
Our provisions had to be carried in on men's 
backs, for the snow had not been broken in time 
enough to admit of horses or even oxen, so that 
one half of our men were employed in carrying, 
or, as it is technically termed, packing provisions 
for the other. The want of oxen produced an* 
other enormous source of expenditure ; when a 
log was cut it had to be drawn by drag ropes 
out of the way, and thirty men could not per- 
form, in the deep snow, what a yoke of oxen 
could easily have performed in light snow or 
none at all. When the snow got very deep, too, 
we had, before felling a tree, to dig a pit round 
it of sufficient diameter to allow a man to stand 
in it and swing his axe. The expense of a war 
surprises John Bull, and he only grumbles; were 
he to enquire into the causes, it is to be hoped 
he would be shy of so expensive an amusement, 
where after all he does not get his fun for his 



96 RECOLLECTIONS OF 

money. I would undertake to-morrow to cut a 
better road than we could possibly do, for forty 
pounds a mile, and make money by it, — give me 
timely warning and a proper season of the year, 
whereas I am convinced that ,£2,500 to ,£3,000 
did not pay for the one we cut. 

Our amusements consisted in shooting part- 
ridges and snaring the Canadian hare, which, as 
it comes out of its hiding place chiefly at night, 
can only be apprehended, as the game laws style 
it, in that manner. The mode of so doing, being 
caused by the necessities of the country, is 
worthy of remark. These animals inhabit the 
swamps, and make roads through the snow for 
the purpose of coming out to where they can 
browse. In these roads a spring is set, by bend- 
ing down a young sapling, and two pegs are 
driven into the ground on each side of the path, 
and notches are cut, in which a yoke is neatly 
set, from which the noose hangs down, much on 
the principle of a mole trap. The hare jerking 
the wire, relieves the yoke, and the sapling re- 
sumes its erect position, carrying the hare eight 
or ten feet above the surface of the snow, and 
this secures him from becoming the prey of the 
wolf or the fox, who, if he was within their 
reach, would inevitably secure him before his le- 
gitimate captor arrived in the morning. 

In this manner passed the winter, monotonous- 
ly enough it must be owned, but as we had full 
employment we had no time to weary. When 
we were about six or seven miles from the end 
of our task, I started along the line to view the 



THE AMERICAN WAR 97 

harbour. In Canada, the line is marked through 
the forest by what is termed a Surveyor's bla 
(a corruption of the French balise,) seeing that 
boughs are stuck in the snow to guide travellers. 
The blaze consists in marking the trees on the 
line of the road with an axe, and except to a 
practised eye, it is easily lost. I had proceeded 
along it some miles, when a covey of partridges 
crossed my path ; I immediately followed them, 
and after shooting several and losing sight of the 
rest, I took off in the direction in which I thought 
I should again cross the blaze. All my efforts 
to find it, however, were unavailing, and as the 
sun was fast declining, I had no other shift than 
to go back on my own steps in the snow. I had 
every motive to exertion, and about sun-set I 
found myself about a mile and a quarter from 
the camp ; but it soon grew so dark that I could 
trace my way no further. I therefore halted, 
and having beat a path of about twenty yards 
in length in the snow, I walked backward and 
forward, determined to keep moving all night. 
This resolution I kept for some hours, I believe, 
but at last I got so sleepy that I could persevere 
no longer, besides I felt that stupor coming over 
me which makes men indifferent as to their fate. 
I therefore determined to use my remaining en- 
ergies in giving myself every chance of life that 
circumstances would admit of. 

I took off my snow shoes, and poured a quan- 
tity of rum into my moccasins ; I buttoned my 
jacket, secured my fur cap about my ears, drew 
on my fur gloves, and calling a little dog I had 



98 RECOLLECTIONS OF 

with me, and laying my hands over my face, I 
made him lie on the top of all. 

I slept most intensely sound, nor did I awake 
till the morning sun was at least an hour high. 
After two or three attempts I managed to rise ; 
my feet were frozen, and one of my hands slight- 
ly so, but both were so benumbed that I could 
not fasten on my snow shoes ; I therefore had to 
stick my toes in the holes of them, and shuffle 
along as best I could. It had snowed about four 
inches during the night, which was all in my fa- 
vor. I managed to scramble on towards the 
camp, but could not manage more than quarter 
of a mile an hour. On my arrival there, some 
old French Canadians undertook the medical 
treatment of my case. They stripped off my 
moccasins and stockings, and commenced rub- 
bing my feet with snow. If there was any pain 
in being frozen 1 was insensible to it, but of all 
the tortures this world can devise, the resuscita- 
tion was the worst I ever experienced. It was 
that abominable sensation called tingling, in an 
extreme degree, to such an extent, indeed, that 
it more than once produced fainting, which un- 
pleasant symptom they combated by pouring 
down my throat a tin cup full of rum. When 
the pain abated, they enveloped my feet in poul- 
tices of boiled beech leaves, which they conceive 
"the sovereignest thing in life" in such cases. 

I was confined to my bed for three weeks, and 
then was only able to go abroad by swathing my 
feet in numerous folds of blanket. In a few weeks 
more I was as well as ever. The poor little dog, 



THE AMERICAN WAR 99 

Moses, the companion of my sufferings, was not 
so fortunate. He reached the camp with difficul- 
ty, and died the next day. 

I thought at the time and since, that this was 
the only instance of a white man sleeping out in 
a Canadian winter night, without fire or cover- 
ing of any kind, but whatever it might have been 
then, we have had an instance here of a Canadian 
French woman, who slept out under similar cir- 
cumstances two consecutive nights this winter. 
She, however, did not get off so cheap as I did, 
for she has been confined to bed for four months 
and lost both her feet, and from the extent of 
the injury it is probable she will be some months 
yet before she is out of the doctor \s hands. 

It might be supposed that this kind of life 
would generate disease, but the very reverse was 
the case. In this, as well as all my other doings 
in the woods, I have always found that where it 
is possible to take proper care of the man, and 
not expose them to wet, they are more healthy 
than in quarters. It is only on military duty, 
or with men who cannot or will not take cnre of 
themselves, that disease takes place. I have 
slept in the woods more than a year, at one 
time and another, in the course of my life, and 
with the foregoing provisos, never was better in 
health or spirits under any circumstances. Ex- 
cept casualties such as cutting feet, (a very com- 
mon accident, even among experienced choppers,) 
and bruises from falling trees, I had not a single 
case worth noticing on this expedition. I ascribe 
this mainly to the beneficial effects of the open 



IOO RECOLLECTIONS OF 

air on the constitution, a cause which, however 
much has been said about it, seems yet not to be 
practically understood by the generality of man- 
kind. Things went on pretty much the same till 
we had nearly completed our business ; no labour 
had been spared in perfecting our work. Bridges 
had been thrown across streams in the depth of 
winter, when officers and men had to stand for 
hours up the middle in ice-cold water : ravines 
had to be bridged when the logs had to be drag- 
ged out of swamps through four feet of snow. 
The month of March was far advanced when we 
promised ourselves a pleasant summer in the 
comfortable quarters that we meant to build for 
ourselves at Penetanguishene, when all our anti- 
cipations were set aside by the arrival of the ap- 
palling intelligence that peace had been concluded 
between His Majesty and the United States. This 
showed us half pay staring us in the face ; how- 
ever, soldiers have nothing to do but obey — we 
were withdrawn — all the expenditure incurred 
went for nothing ; we were marched to Toronto, 
(then York,) and sent to join our respective regi- 
ments. 

My regiment had marched down the country 
on its way to embark for Bngland ; I followed it, 
and after remaining for two months at Sorel, 
embarked in June, 1815, to go to Waterloo, but 
so many unnecessary delays had taken place, 
that though we did not sail till the sixth of June, 
we might quite as well have left Quebec on the 
sixth May, in which case we should unquestion- 
ably have figured in the greatest action of mod- 



THE AMERICAN WAR IOI 

ern times, and his grace, the great Duke, would 
have been none the worse of from 15,000 to 20,- 
000 of his veteran troops on whom he could de- 
pend. It was fated otherwise, however ; thank 
God he managed to do without us. We heard of 
his victory at sea, and a frigate was sent out to 
order us to Portsmouth instead of Antwerp. We 
were some of us sent to augment the Army of 
Occupation in France, others to various quarters 
at home, where, after spending eighteen months 
to my own great satisfaction, but of which a 
narration might not interest my readers, I was 
placed on half-pay, and as I only propose to 
treat of Canada, I shall leave in oblivion the me- 
morabilia of the next eleven and a half vears, 
and in my next chapter take up Canada as I 
found it in 1826. 

* The Highlander is no equestrian — he can trot on his feet 
fifty or sixty miles a day, with much greater ease to himself, and in 
a shorter space of time, than he could ride the same distance. A 
gentleman once sent his Highland servant a message on urgent 
business, and to enable him to execute it sooner, gave him a hor~" 
Donald did not return at the time expected, nor for long after it ; 
at last his master, who was watching anxiously for him, discerned 
him at along distance on the road on foot, creeping at a snail's 
pace, and towing the reluctant quadruped by the bridle. On being 
objurgated for his tardiness, he replied "he could have been here 
twa three hours, but he has taight wi' tapeast," i.e. delayed, or 
impeded by the horse. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Alexander, Sir J. E., 62. 

America, 6, 8, 21. 

American, 6, 15, 32, 36, 54, 67, 75, 90. 

American Army, 9, 18, 41, 51. 

American Commander, 18. 

American Engineers, 79. 

American Newspapers, 17. 

American Officer, 78. 

American Piquet, 73. 

American Regulars, 17. 

American Revolution, 8. 

American Rifleman, 70. 

American Sentries, 69. 

American Teutonic Race, 21. 

American U. E. Loyalists, 70. 

Americans, 18, 19, 22, 23, 71, 90. 

Antwerp, 101. 

Army of Occupation in France, 101. 

Asiatic, 78. 

Atlantic, 32. 

Bardolph, 29. 

Baron of Bradwardine, 8. 

Batavian, 21, 24. 

Battle of the Falls, 81, 87. 

Bay of Bengal, 6. 

Bay of Biscay, 6. 

Bengal, 31. 

Blackwood's Magazine, 3. 

British, 22, 36. 



I06 INDEX 

British Army, 9, 59, 70. 

British Crown, 21. 

British North America, 47. 

British Subject, 23. 

Britishers, 35. 

Brockville, 28. 

Brotherton, 86. 

Buffalo, 58. 

Butler's Barracks, 53, 55. 

Butler's Rangers, 53. 

Byron, 3, 27. 

Caesar-like, 5. 

Canada, 1, 4, 9, 10, 14, 19, 21, 35, 44, 53, 62, 63, 

72, 91, 97, 101. 
Canadas, 10, 15. 
Canadian, 10, 63, 96, 99. 
Canadian Fencibles, 42, 91. 
Canadian French Woman, 99. 
Canadian Militia, 61. 
Cape of Good Hope, 6, 9, 21, 86. 
Catharine, 47. 
Catholic, 32. 
Catholics, 32. 

Cavalry of Tarlton's Legion, 9. 
Celtic Moonshee, 31. 
Chelsea Pension, 26. 
Chinsurhae, 21. 
Chippawa, 56, 58, 87, 88. 
Chrysler's Farm, 18, 21. 
Clyde, 56. 
Cobus, 24. 

Cockburn, Colonel, 91. 
Cockneys of London, 27. 
Convan, Major General, 53. 



INDEX lO 



Corbett, Mrs. Boyle, 58. 

Cork, 35. 

Cornwall, 19, 30, 36, 41. 

Court of St. James, 47. 

Court of St. Petersburg, 47. 

Court of the Chateau, St. Louis, 47. 

Covington, General, 18. 

Drummond, Lieutenant Colonel, 62, 63, 82, 83, 86. 

Drummond, Sir Gordon, 45, 49, 63, 86. 

Dugald Dalgetty, 9. 

Dundas, 91. 

Dundas, Sir David, 69. 

Dunkirk, 7, 9, 264. 

Dutch, 22, 23, 24. 

Dutchman, 21. 

Edgar, 57. 

Edinburgh, 32. 

England, 26, 35, 60, 100. 

English, 42. 

Ettrick Shepherd, 2. 

Europe, 61. 

European, 78. 

Falls of Niagara, 56, 57, 58. 

Falstaff, 71. 

Ferrara, 83. 

Fort Erie, 53, 58, 61, 62, 64, 65, 67, 71, 76, 8l, 

83, 86. 
Fort Niagara, 62. 
Fort Wellington, 20, 27, 28. 
France, 7, 8. 
Frazer Highlanders, 8. 
French, 9, 12, 14, 97- 
French Canadians, 98. 



108 INDEX 

French King, 7. 
French Service, 8, 
Frenchmen, 10, II, 28. 
Gaelic, 42. 
Gaelic Bible, 31. 
Gait, Mr., 48, 49. 
Gananoque, 28. 
Ganges, 21. 
Garlic Hill, 6. 
Garrison of Quebec, 6. 
George II., 64. 
George the Third, 78. 
German Contingent, 68. 
Glengarries, 65, 70, 73. 
Glengarry, 19, 41 • 
Glengarry Militia, 41. 
Glengarry Regiment, 69. 
Great Britain, 1, 8. 
Greenock, 8. 
Grenadier Island, 18. 
Gulph of St. Lawrence, 6. 
Hampshire, 3. 
Highland, 31. 
Highland Militia, 19. 
Highlands, 7. 
Holland, 21. 
Hollander, 21. 
Hindostan, 89. 
Homer, 2. 
Horace, 2, 27. 
Hospital Mate, 26. 
Hudson, 21. 

Incorporated Militia, 72. 
India, 9, 86. 



INDEX 

Indian, 14, 57, 76, 93. 

Indians, 28, 29, 76, yy, 78, 86. 

Indian Tribes, 78. 

lnvernesshire, 6. 

Irish, 37. 

Irish Brigade, 8. 

Irish Subaltern, 25. 

Irishman, 71. 

Irishmen, 27. 

Isle of Wight, 3, 4, 72. 

Jacobite, 6. 

Java, 9, 21. 

John Bull, 11, 95. 

Johnson, Sir William, 62. 

Johnston, Dr., 30. 

Keltic, 62, 63, 86. 

King George, 71. 

Kingston, 18, 20, 28, 36, 42, 43, 44, 48, 49. 

Lachine, 14, 17, 20. 

Lake Erie, 90. 

Lake Huron, 90. 

Lake of the Thousand Islands, 28. 

Lake Ontario, 10, 43. 

Lake Saint Clair, 90. 

Lake Simcoe, 90, 91. 

London, U. C, 62. 

Lordship of Craigcrook, 21. 

Lower Canada, 10, 12. 

Lower Province, 36. 

Machiavel, 21. 

Malone, 19. 

Mautass, 76, 77. 78. 

Meg Dodds, 37. 



HO INDEX 

Mohawk Indians, 22. 

Mohawk River, 62. 

Montreal, 10, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 36. 

Montreal General Hospital, 26. 

Morrison, Colonel, 18. 

Moses, 99. 

Mother-bank, 4. 

Muggridge, Major Spencer, 3. 

Muscadines of Paris, 27. 

McDonald, John, 41. 

Napoleon, 8, 61, 74. 

Newport, 3. 

New World, 21. 

Niagara, 22, 51, 56, 79. 

Niagara District, 23. 

Niagara Frontier, 31, 35, 42. 

Niagara River, 51. 

North America, 9, 23. 

North American, 23. 

North American Continent, 12. 

Oeolus, 264. 

Ogdensburg, 31. 

Old Guard, 28. 

Ontario, 36. 

Parkhurst, 3. 

Pattison, Captain, 75. 

Peggy Bruce, 37, 3§, 39, 40, 41, 42. 

Penetanguishene, 90, 100. 

Peninsula, 63. 

Perthshire, 86. 

Plattsburg, 48. 

Polar, 42. 

Portsmouth, 85, 101. 

Portuguese, 77. 



INDEX l I I 



Prescott, 20. 

Prevost, Sir George, 47, 48, 49. 
Prince Charles Edward, 6. 
Province, 47, 49. 
Province of Canada, 47. 
Provincial Parliament, 3«. 
Prussian School, 68. 
Quebec, 4, 6, 10, 13, 53, 100. 
Queenston, 58, 79, 88, 89. 
Queenston Heights, 51. 
Regiment, 32nd, 62, 69. 
Regiment, 82nd, 75, 76. 
Regiment, 89th, 18, 87. 
Regiment, 100th, 42, 88. 
Regiment, 103rd, 84, 85. 
Regiment, 104th, 62. 
Regiment de Dillon, 8. 
Revolutionary War, 21. 
River Detroit, 90. 
River Saint Clair, 90. 
River St. Lawrence, II. 
Ross, Sir John, 42. 
Rotenburg, General de, 18. 
Sackett's Harbour, 48. 
Sacs, 78. 

Salmon River, 18. 
Scotch, 37. 

Scotch Regiment of Guards, 7. 
Scotland, 8, 53. 
Scott, Colonel, 86. 
Scott, Major General, 51. 
Scott, Sir Walter, 3. 
Sheridan, Tom, 16. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




011 837 126 4 



